Extreme pollution forces China to shut down hundreds of coal, steel operations
The country’s state planner said it would also set up a no-coal zone in cities around Beijing in 2017 to try reducing the capital's hazardous smog levels.
Mining and energy firms have swooped to buy more than 390,000ha across Queensland Australia despite almost unanimous opposition to the sell-off of prime farming land. In the Surat Basin west of Brisbane, small farming communities have been decimated as the race for mining riches forces families off properties after decades of working the land.
Fears over the impact of the mining squeeze on communities prompted angry locals to rally at Oakey, while an inquiry has been announced by the New South Wales Parliament into the environmental impacts of the coal seam gas industry.
The Navajo Nation's allegations that a coal mining company conspired with others to cheat the tribe out of as much as $600 million in royalties was settled in federal court on Thursday.
The tribe sued what is now Peabody Energy in 1999. The terms of the agreement are confidential. The US Supreme Court ruled against the Navajo in a similar lawsuit filed against the federal government.
Peabody has operated through a business partnership with the Navajo Nation and the Hopi Tribe for more than 40 years in Northeastern Arizona.
Peabody Energy Corp. is leaving the door open for a rival bidder to step in for Macarthur Coal Ltd. by offering less for the Australian mining company than it did last year, even as profit is projected to double.
Regal Resources, via its 50% owned entity UCTL Pty, has retained Stanford University in California, one of the world’s leading research universities, to conduct Phase Two Proof of Concept Testing of its UCTL technology.
Rio Tinto reported a surge in profits due to strong demand in Asia and higher metals prices on Thursday but shares in the company spiked lower in New York, opening down more than 7% and wiping more than $10 billion off the value of the globe's second largest miner.
Net earnings for the first half year were $7.6bn, up 30% on the $5.8bn the firm made a year earlier. Commenting on the results chairman Jan du Plessis said the economic environment remains volatile but expected the Australia-based company continue to experience higher than average growth for the rest of the year.
The company also said it was experiencing high cost inflation in some "mining hotspots" and cautioned that the strong Australian and Canadian dollar were impacting its profitability.
A new coal terminal proposed for Gladstone port's Wiggins Island in Queensland has met with delays for the third time this year, as the project's 16 coal company shareholders including Cockatoo Coal, Yancoal and Xstrata have still to raise all of the capital for the project.
Costs for the first stage of the Wiggins Island coal terminal have escalated to A$3.7 billion ($3.9 billion) from A$2 billion in October 2010, a spokesman for the coal industry consortium that is backing the terminal said Wednesday.
One protesters associated with the Radical Action for Mountain People's Survival Campaign has been arrested after climbing down from a tree platform he has been occupying at Coal River Mountain West Virginia since July 20.
Becks Kolins (pictured on the left) was arrested by state police. Kolins and Catherine-Ann MacDougal climbed the trees to protest operations at the Bee Tree surface mine owned by Alpha Natural Resources, the company that bought Massey Energy following a deadly blast at one of its coal mines. McDougal says she's staying put.
Anglo-Swiss mining giant Xstrata said on Tuesday its first half net profit jumped 27 per cent to $US2.9 billion and that it expected even better earnings for the second half.
"A substantially stronger financial performance in the first half reflected growing demand for our products from emerging Asian economies and recovering Western markets," Xstrata chief executive Mick Davis said in a statement.
Businessweek quotes a confidential report prepared for South Africa's mining CEOs as saying South Africa’s ruling party is closer to some form of nationalization than at any other time since the end of apartheid. A government takeover of mines could choke investments in a country with metal and mineral reserves estimated at 2.5 trillion and lead to a collapse of the currency, the rand.
Firebrand Julius Malema (pictured), the leader of the youth wing of the ruling African National Congress which often acts as kingmaker in the country’s politics, is spearheading the campaign to seize mines, farms and banks. Malema is never far from headlines in the country with racially charged comments but now an anti-corruption police unit is probing a trust fund owned by him allegedly being used to funnel payments in exchange for securing government tenders.