Welcome back to your weekly mining news recap. At the end of each week we’ll catch you up on the stories you may have missed from CIM Magazine and elsewhere. In this week’s headlines: Barrick and NovaGold get federal permits for Donlin, Canada considers safeguards on steel, and more copper news than you can shake a stick at.

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Barrick Gold and NovaGold Resources got some good news at the beginning of the week. The two companies received a record of decision and multiple permits for their joint-venture Donlin gold project in Alaska on Monday. The record of decision concludes the National Environment Policy process, and the permits were for Donlin’s water management plan and the right of way for a natural gas pipeline necessary to service the remote location. The decision comes four months after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers released a positive environmental assessment for the project, despite concerns of environmentalists who’ve said Donlin is expected to cause an increase in mercury levels in local waterways.

The federal government is looking to impose new tariffs and quotas on some steel imports to prevent foreign steel from disrupting the domestic market. Finance Minister Bill Morneau said on Tuesday the government was launching a 15-day consultation process on safeguard measures for seven types of steel imports. Placing safeguards on certain products prevents foreign steel that was previously bound for the U.S. from being deflected into Canada.

Workers at BHP’s Escondida copper mine in Chile will vote on a new contract offer from the company over the next few days, potentially allowing the company to avoid a repeat of last year’s 44-day strike that reduced the operation’s annual output and significantly disrupted copper markets. After days of government mediation, BHP said it had reached an agreement with the union. Neither party has disclosed details of the new contract offer.

The news of the Escondida deal came on the same day that copper prices dropped into a bear market. The price has fallen 20 per cent from its sustained peak in the past year, but this week’s sudden drop was the product of lower export figures out of China, combined with Turkey’s ongoing currency crisis and the trade spat between the United States and China. Ryan McKay, an associate commodity strategist at TD Securities, told us that BHP’s deal was the “straw that broke the camel’s back,” because it eased supply concerns that had kept prices from “tumbling too far.” Copper’s fall caused price drops in the other London Metal Exchange base metals as well.

Hope you’re not sick of copper news already, because we’ve got more. The London Metal Exchange will start requiring copper producers that source metal from the Democratic Republic of the Congo to carry out independent audits to prove their material is ethically sourced, according to Bloomberg. Copper, tin and cobalt producers that buy from the Congo will be categorized as higher-risk suppliers.

On Thursday, Hudson Resources reported it has completed 70 per cent of the construction on its White Mountain anorthosite project in Greenland. The company said it plans to make an initial shipment to North America by the end of the year. Pure, highly calcic anorthosite has only been discovered in large deposits in two places: at White Mountain, and on the moon. (Now might be a good time to read our profile of the unique project here.)

If you’re looking for some weekend reading, check out our Q&A with Ward Wilson, a professor of geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering at the University of Alberta and the NSERC/COSIA Industrial Research Chair in Oil Sands Tailings Geotechnique. Wilson wants to tackle the industry’s two biggest challenges – acid rock drainage and wet tailings storage liability – by mixing dewatered tailings and waste rock together.