The Royal Canadian Mint has a hit on its hands after raising $600 million from the sale of its exchange traded fund alternative, exchange traded receipts backed by physical gold bullion held in the mint’s facilities in Ottawa, Ontario. The Canadian mint, which introduced the ETRs just over three weeks ago, says that ETRs are different than other gold investment products since the purchaser of an ETR owns the actual gold rather than a unit or share in an entity that owns the gold. Given the money raised, the Globe and Mail calculates that the ETRs may be the largest initial public offering of the year.

Full scale installations of the InLine Pressure Jig (IPJ) continuous gravity recovery (CGR) circuits at Pirquitas (Silver Standard Resources) and Kloof (Gold Fields) provide further evidence of the strong correlation of Gekko’s CGR laboratory test work protocol and plant results.

Brazil has temporarily banned Chevron from drilling in the country after it caused an oil spill off the coast of Rio de Janeiro, raising doubts about the company’s role in one of the industry’s biggest investment programmes. Late on Wednesday, Brazil’s National Petroleum Agency (ANP) accused the U.S. company of negligence late on Wednesday, announcing it would suspend all of Chevron’s drilling until it clarified the reasons for a spill that released almost 3,000 barrels of oil into the sea earlier this month. Analysts believe that the Brazilian government is keen to make an example of Chevron as a warning to other foreign companies looking to take a share of Brazil’s pre-salt reserves, which are estimated to contain as much as 50bn barrels of oil.

Peru's government urged opponents of Newmont Mining's proposed $4.8 billion Conga gold mine project to refrain from violence during a protest scheduled for today as President Ollanta Humala scrambles to solve the bitter dispute.

London-listed base minerals explorer EMED Mining (LON:EMED) enjoyed a 6.5% bump in its share price Wednesday on news that the government of Andalucia is supporting a restart of its Rio Tinto copper mine. The mine has no connection to the Anglo-Australian mining giant of the same name. EMED said "the Junta de Andalucia has made clear public policy statements committing support for the company’s plans to restart the Rio Tinto Mine as soon as possible, the most recent such statement being in Minas de Rio Tinto last week by the Minister for Economy in Andalucia."

Mining Review reports the government of Tanzania has allayed fears over likely land disputes between uranium investors and local residents in the Ruvuma region of southern Tanzania, and is confident that the envisaged uranium project in the area will be operational late next year. The controversial uranium mine is located inside the Selous Game Reserve, Africa’s second-largest wildlife sanctuary and a Unesco heritage site. Australia’s Mantra Resources project in the southern part of the 54,600-square kilometre park is estimated to have 53.9 million pounds of uranium oxide deposits which is worth some $2.7bn at current market prices. Officials claim that mining would only involve about 1% of the park’s overall area and that income accrued from mining would help fund upkeep of the park, but environmentalists have slammed the plan.

Bloomberg reports AngloGold Ashanti, the third- largest producer of the metal, is scaling back a $3 billion, 10-year programme to extend is Mponeng mine outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Mponeng is the world's deepest mine and extends about 4 km (2.5 miles) underground. To meet an output target of 5.5 million ounces of gold by 2015, AngloGold will speed up expansion outside its South African base where barring technological breakthroughs, gold reserves are too deep to be mined profitably and safely. South African gold miners have to contend with some of the highest cash costs in the industry which at some properties are almost double the global average of $620 per ounce. AngloGold's most recent quarterlies showed production at Mponeng declined 8% to 117,000 ounces at $587/ounce.

The US coal industry has settled on an unlikely candidate to build America's largest coal terminal. Bellingham is a small coastal city 32 kilometers south of the Canadian border known for being one of the few cities in the US to rely solely on solar and hydro-generated electricity and its innovative building efficiency program. Plans are now underway for a new $500 million bulk dry goods facility to ship 28 million tonnes of coal and potentially 8 million tonnes of potash to Asian markets and HuffingtonPost reports the plans have sparked a fierce fight in this otherwise quiet college town of 81,000 residents.

The Maritime Executive reports iron ore shipments on the Great Lakes totaled 5.7 million tons in October, a decrease of 11 percent from September, but an increase of 13 percent compared to a year ago. October loadings also were up 7.2 percent compared to the month’s 5-year average. Shipments from US ports totaled 5.1 million tons, an increase of 18 percent compared to a year ago. However, loadings at Canadian ports slipped 16.3 percent from a year ago.