TSX rises slightly, Oct. 30-Nov. 3

Canada’s benchmark index rose 0.42% to finish the trading week at 16,020.16. The S&P/TSX Gold Mining Index and the S&P/TSX Global Gold Index posted incremental gains, rising 0.42% to 68.01 and 1.5% to 194.96. West Texas Intermediate crude rose 3.2% to close at US$55.64 per barrel. The gold price fell 0.30% to US$1269.40 per ounce.

Suncor Energy shares rose $1.69 to $44.99. The company announced third-quarter net earnings of $1.3 billion, a more than $900-million gain over the same quarter of the previous year. It also set a quarterly record of 739,900 barrels of oil equivalent per day, or 11,800 more than the same quarter last year. On Oct. 24, the company applied to the Alberta Energy Regulator for approval of its Meadow Creek West project. The project would recover 40,000 barrels per day and enter construction as early as 2022.

In October a contract worker employed by Aecon Mining died working at Suncor’s Millennium oilsands mine north of Fort McMurray. The man was digging a trench when he was buried and pronounced dead at the site. No one else was injured, and RCMP and health and safety officials are investigating.

Imperial Metals shares fell 41¢ to $2.69. The Vancouver-based copper miner will receive a $10-million loan from billionaire Norman Murray Edwards through an affiliate company. He will also buy $4.6 million of a $5-million private share placement. Edwards, a Canadian oilsands financier and co-owner of the Calgary Flames, was already the company’s largest shareholder. He owns a 35% equity stake and has previously helped bail out the company.

Although copper is performing well, the price of Imperial shares has been declining. In October the company said it would not meet its 2017 metal production targets due to July forest fires in the Cariboo region of southcentral British Columbia.

Imperial has not posted an annual profit since 2013.

Shares of Ivanhoe Mines rose 55¢ to $4.78. On Oct. 30, Ivanhoe announced it would rebuild 34 km of track to connect its 68%-owned Kipushi zinc-copper project with the DRC national railway at Munama, south of Nubumashi. The Kipushi-Munama line has been inactive since 2011, but helps connect the DRC copper belt to seaports at Durban and Richards Bay in South Africa, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania and Lobito in Angola.

In October, the company obtained board member Marc Faber’s resignation after racist comments he wrote in his latest edition of the Gloom, Boom & Doom report.

“And thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks,” Faber wrote. “Otherwise, the U.S. would look like Zimbabwe, which it might look like one day anyway, but at least America enjoyed 200 years in the economic and political sun under a white majority.”