Public disclosures – Sphinx Mining Systems

February 2, 2021February 2, 2021

What We Know About ESG Disclosures from Mine Safety Disclosures

Mining companies are under pressure from stakeholders to provide more relevant environmental, safety and governance (ESG) disclosures. Since 2010, the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) has required a range of mine safety disclosures in an effort to elicit more ESG disclosures for companies with mining operations. After over a decade of this disclosure regime, I believe there are lessons we can learn from this subset of ESG disclosures. This post will summarize my thoughts on this.

January 18, 2021January 18, 2021

Now Clarified: SEC’s Regulation S-K 1300’s Compliance Timeline

When the Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) passed its new mining property disclosure rules (Regulation S-K 1300) it set January 1, 2021 as the compliance date. Specifically, the SEC required that companies with material mining operations “must comply with the final rule amendments for the first fiscal year beginning on or after January 1, 2021.” While the compliance date for a company’s annual report has been clear from the beginning, the implications for when a company needs to file a registration statement within its “first fiscal year beginning on or after January 1, 2021” that requires disclosures of exploration results, resources and reserves have not been that obvious. The SEC, in guidance issued in April 2019, clarified circumstances under which disclosures of exploration results, resources and reserves in registration statements prior to the first annual report that is S-K 1300 complaint do not have to comply with S-K 1300. In this post, I will do my best to explain this to mining professionals who are not attorneys.

January 2, 2021January 2, 2021

Was the SEC Encouraging Companies to use External QPs in S-K 1300?

Since the US Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) passed its new mining property disclosure rules, I have heard many suggest that the SEC would prefer mining companies to use external professionals (i.e. consultants) as qualified persons (QPs) instead of their own employees. Such people cite the fact that the Commission, in the rules, allowed a third-party firm (i.e. a consulting company) to sign a technical report summary (TRS) and provide written consent on behalf of its employees who prepare the TRS. They point to the fact that the rules do not provide the same allowance for employees. This is simply not true and I will attempt to explain the Commission’s reasoning for arriving at this position in this post.