Northern Promise: Ring of Fire smoulders anew

Northern Promise is a six-part series that explores the pace and progress of development in Canada’s remote communities. In this first instalment, Peter Koven covers the glacial-paced evolution of Ontario’s Ring of Fire.

Six years ago, there was no talk about uncertainty over environmental permits or First Nations disputes. The only mood surrounding the Ring of Fire was sheer euphoria.

When a then-unknown company called Noront Resources Ltd. announced its first discovery hole in the James Bay Lowlands in August 2007, it launched a staking rush and investor frenzy of unprecedented proportions for an Ontario project. Junior mining companies flocked to the region, and the mere mention that they had some land was likely to triple their stock price. It all culminated in Noront’s annual meeting that October, a giant party disguised as a shareholder meeting in which Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire was blared at full volume and then-chief executive Richard Nemis was treated like a rock star.

Peter Koven/Financial PostDrill samples from McFauld's Lake. The Ring has turned out to be far bigger discovery than first anticipated, with an estimated $30-billion to $50-billion of minerals in the ground.

Sadly, that Noront AGM turned out to be the high point for the Ring of Fire story so far.

That is not due to the quality of the discovery. The Ring turned out to be far bigger than first anticipated, with an estimated $30-billion to $50-billion of minerals in the ground. But the exploration success has become a liability; the project has become so huge and so important to Ontario that everyone is working with extra caution to make sure it is done properly. For people watching from the outside, it feels like a glacial pace.

“This is a legacy resource development project,” said Greg Rickford, the federal minister in charge of the Ring of Fire. “It will require collaboration at every level of government.”

Development is caught in an enormous bureaucracy. The permitting process cannot even start until a court decides what environmental assessment process will be used. First Nations groups continue to express concerns. And the companies that want to develop the region (Noront and Cliffs Natural Resources Inc.) are in such poor financial condition that the concept of them spending billions of dollars to build mines is questionable.

Meanwhile, the Ring of Fire remains the same desolate, mosquito-infested swamp that it was six years ago, a reminder of how much needs to be done to kickstart development.

Cliffs has thrown in the towel for the time being. It suspended work on its US$3.3-billion Black Thor chromite project in the Ring in June after making no progress on key issues with Queens Park and First Nations. Noront shares, meanwhile, are down 97% from their peak, and Mr. Nemis, the man responsible for all this, was turfed out by his own investors years ago.

Perhaps at first, there wasn’t an understanding of just how complex this development is

This is not what anyone anticipated back in 2007. And yet, the future may finally be looking up.

Key stakeholders involved with this project maintain that important progress is being made. That includes the Ontario government itself, which is caught in the middle of a careful balancing act among affected groups.

“Perhaps at first, there wasn’t an understanding of just how complex this development is,” acknowledged Michael Gravelle, Ontario’s minister of northern development and mines.

The government certainly gets it now. It is deep into two parallel processes over the project, one with the miners and one with Matawa First Nations, a council of nine aboriginal groups impacted by the project.

Matawa is finally ready for serious talks. The council hired Bob Rae as chief negotiator in June, while the province turned to former Supreme Court justice Frank lacobucci. Both men were present at Matawa’s annual meeting last week, where the chiefs clearly signalled that they want the project to move forward and are keen to resolve issues around jobs, infrastructure, revenue sharing and environmental oversight.

“It’s still early days. I’m optimistic, but we’ll just have to see what happens,” Mr. Rae said.

The bigger challenge for Queen’s Park might be dealing with Cliffs, which is being counted on to develop key infrastructure in the Ring of Fire (plus a massive ferrochrome smelter in Sudbury). The Cleveland-based company complains that it can’t even get back to the table with officials to nail down key agreements governing the project, and is frustrated that it still doesn’t have surface rights needed to develop a road up to the region. Those issues, along with uncertainty about the permitting process, forced the miner to suspend work.

If we’ve learned anything from previous large-scale projects across the country, it’s worth taking the time to get it right

“The company can only drive the project so far without other people involved keeping up with us,” said Bill Boor, head of ferroalloys at Cliffs.

None of these issues even matter if Cliffs can’t get its financial act together. What many stakeholders seem to ignore is that Cliffs is in no position to develop this project. Its balance sheet is loaded down by US$3.1-billion of net debt, a result of its disastrous $4.9-billion takeover of Consolidated Thompson Iron Mines Ltd. in 2011.

Cliffs maintains that the US$3.3-billion capital spend in the Ring of Fire is manageable if it secures a deep-pocketed partner, and Mr. Boor has correctly pointed out that first-rate projects tend to get financed regardless of market conditions. But even he admitted that getting board approval for this project would be an awfully tough sell right now.

Likewise, it is hard to imagine the Cliffs’ own shareholders supporting development until the company deals with a debt burden that BMO analyst Tony Robson called “unsustainable.”

It all suggests that development of the Ring of Fire is not imminent, and Cliffs’ prediction that it can reach production in 2016 is highly dubious.

But with everyone getting focused on the path ahead, the next six years of this story could be far more productive than the first six.

“If we’ve learned anything from previous large-scale projects across the country, it’s worth taking the time to get it right,” Mr. Gravelle said.