Ring of Fire bogged down in bickering – Timmins Press

TIMMINS – The much vaunted Ring Of Fire mining development is bogged down in bureaucratic studies along with bickering over where to build a new road, or rail link, to what is clearly the newest, richest and most promising mining development in Ontario so far this century.

That was part of the assessment offered in Timmins this week at an impromptu news scrum with federal Natural Resources Minister Greg Rickford, the MP for Kenora and the minister for FedNor. But Rickford also said he is still hopeful the project will blossom.

The Ring Of Fire refers to a massive deposit of chromite and other precious minerals located in the McFauld’s Lake and Webequie area, about 600 kilometres northwest of Timmins. Chromite is an important element in manufacturing stainless steel. The Ring of Fire area could become the largest chromite mining site in North America, a venture measured in the tens of billions of dollars.

The project involves KWG Resources Inc., which has the Eagle’s Nest property, and Noront Resources, which has the Big Daddy project. They are the two major players involved. Both are Canadian. Another large company, Cliff’s Natural Resources, an American company, was supposed to be the big player in the development, but it pulled out last year, saying it could not get rights to build a transportation link, nor could it get infrastructure concessions from Queen’s Park.