Teck's Biggest Copper Mine Walks Off the Job, and Ovintiv Turns a Rumour Into a $1.26 Billion Cheque

Happy Monday! Pour the double-double, dust off the core boxes, and let's see who hit something overnight.

Canada's biggest copper mine just went quiet, and copper didn't even blink. Down in the patch, Friday's takeover whispers about Logan Energy turned into Monday's signed cheque, and General Motors handed Energy Fuels an unwelcome plot twist on its biggest rare earth bet. Pour something strong; there's a lot to get through.

As of 5:00 p.m. ET, Oct 26 · Source: Kitco, Trading Economics, Zonebourse, GlobeNewswire

🥇 Gold (spot): $4,016.20/oz 📈
🥈 Silver (spot): $53.85/oz 📈
🔌 Copper: $6.51/lb 📈
☢️ Uranium (U₃O₈ spot): $90.10/lb 📈
🛢️ WTI Crude: $101.28/bbl 📉
🔥 Natural Gas (Henry Hub): $2.61/MMBtu 📉
🍁 TSX-V Composite: 825.28 📈
💵 U.S. Dollar (DXY): 101.70 📉

Copper's holding near its highs even with Teck's biggest mine sitting at reduced output, a sign the strike hasn't dented supply expectations yet. Gold and silver both firmed into the afternoon, WTI and natural gas gave back some of last week's gains, and uranium is still running on Friday's print, the freshest read available right now, so treat it as direction, not gospel.

What happened. Teck Resources ($TCK.B.TSX ( ▲ 2.05% )) confirmed that United Steelworkers Local 7619 began strike action at its Highland Valley Copper operation in British Columbia on October 24, after contract talks over wages, pensions and staffing broke down and a 72-hour strike notice expired. All 944 union members who cast a ballot voted to walk out. Highland Valley is Canada's largest copper mine and produced 127,100 tonnes of copper in 2025, about 28% of Teck's total output. The mine is running at reduced capacity, and Teck says the production hit depends on how long the strike lasts.

Why it happened. The union's old contract expired September 30, and talks stalled over pay and retirement benefits, with the union arguing the mine has struggled to recruit and keep skilled workers. The timing stings: Teck is mid-merger with Anglo American, a deal meant to create one of the world's five largest copper producers, and a labour standoff at its flagship Canadian mine is not the headline either side wanted during that courtship.

What it means for your position. Copper is already trading near record highs on tight global supply, and taking a chunk of a major Canadian producer's output offline, even partially, tightens that market further and gives every copper junior's "the metal wants to go higher" thesis a little more oxygen. It's bullish for the metal, not for Teck's near-term production guidance, and a prolonged strike is a real risk to the Anglo American deal's optics heading into year-end. Watch the calendar, not the headline: this is the kind of story that resolves in days or drags for months, and the difference matters a lot to anyone holding copper paper right now.

👉 Read the full story

Rare earth processing's newest cautionary tale just landed on Energy Fuels' desk, and it has nothing to do with rock.

So what. The deal is still expected to close in 2027, and Energy Fuels built a price-adjustment mechanism into the amended terms precisely because it knew this dispute was live before signing. The arbitration outcome, not today's headline, is the actual catalyst to watch.

👉 Dig in

Somewhere in northern Colombia, a company most of us have never heard of just out-negotiated one of the world's biggest copper miners for the right to go look for rock. OP Gold Capital, a private Colombian explorer, won Block 2, a 60-square-kilometre copper, gold and polymetallic exploration block in Cesar province, after Freeport-McMoRan came back with a counteroffer raising its payment to the state. As the original bidder, OP Gold had the right to top that, and it did, bumping its additional state payment from 1.5% to 2.5% and adding a 1.5% social contribution on top. The company also picked up the neighbouring Block 3 in the same round of contracts.

So what. OP Gold Capital is private, so there's no ticker to add to the symbol log, but it's a fun reminder that in Colombia's current permitting cycle, the government is extracting real value from majors and juniors alike, and sometimes the junior wins the arm-wrestle on paper even when it can't win it on balance sheet.

👉 See the details

What happened. Ovintiv ($OVV ( ▲ 0.39% )) confirmed it will acquire Logan Energy ($LOECF ( ▲ 8.82% )) in an all-cash deal worth C$1.40 a share, about US$890 million or C$1.26 billion including Logan's net debt, turning the Bloomberg-reported sale rumour this newsletter flagged last Friday into a signed agreement. The deal picks up roughly 266,000 net acres in the Montney oil window, about 420 net drilling locations, two oil batteries, and stakes in two gas processing facilities, all in the Simonette and Pouce Coupe areas. Logan is spinning its assets outside the Montney and Duvernay fairways into a new, separately held company, Logan Oil Corp, distributed to Logan shareholders.

Why it happened. Logan spent most of 2026 land-banking and financing its way into a de-risked Montney oil position, exactly the kind of buildout that usually ends in a sale to a bigger consolidator, and Ovintiv gets a bolt-on that pushes its core Montney footprint to about 720,000 net acres with an expected $60 million a year in cost synergies.

What it means for your position. This is the rumour-to-reality playbook this newsletter called out on Friday, right down to the bid from a larger consolidator. Ovintiv expects the deal to be accretive to cash flow per share in 2027 and says it won't touch its shareholder return targets, so this reads as a clean, well-telegraphed bolt-on rather than a stretch. The tell for the rest of the patch: this year's Montney land-banking phase keeps resolving into M&A, not standalone growth stories, so any other junior Montney name still "building out a position" just became a little more interesting as a takeout candidate.

👉 Read the full story

Brookfield and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board are putting a data centre on the bones of an Alberta coal-to-gas conversion. The Boreal Technology Hub, proposed for TransAlta's ($TA.TSX ( ▲ 0.47% )) Keephills power station site in Parkland County, is pegged at $5 billion in first-phase capital spending, a 230 MW grid allocation with room to scale up to 1,600 MW at full build-out, and a closed-loop cooling system to keep water use down. TransAlta is the named power provider on a project first teased as an MOU back in February, and the proponents say it could bring roughly $24 million a year in municipal tax revenue and a $65 million provincial levy once built.

So what. Every power-for-AI story in the patch has been long on megawatt promises and short on shovels so far. This one has a real site, a real utility behind the meter, and municipal leaders already fielding skeptical questions from residents about water and power draw, which is a healthier sign of a project actually moving than another glossy capacity announcement would be.

👉 Dig in

PrairieSky Royalty ($PSK.TSX ( ▲ 0.03% )) posted Q3 2026 funds from operations of $127.9 million, or $0.55 a share, up 42% from a year earlier, as royalty production climbed to 26,936 barrels of oil equivalent a day and WTI pricing ran hotter than last year's comparison quarter. The company declared a $0.265-a-share dividend, a 48% payout ratio, and cut net debt by 34% in the quarter instead of buying back stock, a reversal from the $67.9 million it spent on repurchases in the same quarter last year.

So what. A royalty company choosing debt paydown over buybacks even with a 42% year-over-year FFO jump is a quiet tell that management isn't treating today's commodity prices as a permanent state of the world. Nothing dramatic here, just a clean quarter from the patch's biggest royalty name.

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Nine hundred forty four. That's how many Highland Valley Copper union members cast a strike ballot, and every single one of them voted yes. No abstentions, no maybes, just a unanimous "we're walking." Canadian federal elections should be so lucky.

Keep your grades high and your dilution low. See you tomorrow. ⛏️