Rising mineral prices trigger artisanal and small-scale mining ‘explosion’ — report

Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold reported on Wednesday that the strike at its Grasberg operations in Papua, Indonesia, which began Sept. 15, is costing the company about 3 million pounds of copper and 5 thousand ounces of gold for each day of the work stoppage. The company says that it is negotiating a two-year extension of its bi-annual collective labour agreement, which is scheduled for renewal on September 30, 2011.

Three years before it has yet to really produce coal, the northern Galilee Basin is already fully booked to Indian and Chinese coal mining companies. The Australian Newspaper said India's Adani Group already owns some 7.8 billion tones into the Queensland coal field, and is poised to pay an additional US$1.3 billion for a 7.9 billion-tonne coal tenement. While Australian billionaire Clive Palmer owns some 3.7 billion tones into the field, which reports say he is developing with Chinese business partners. The northern Galilee basin has a total of 20 billion tonnes production capacity.

The Hindustan Times reports that Goa's mining minister, Digambar Kamat, is being accused by the BJP party and members of his own party for participating in illegal mining. The website says the Congress is considering various options to avoid a similar situation to what happened in neighbouring Karnataka state, where the ruling BJP party was forced to dump its chief minister after a damning report accused him and other politicians of corruption in the illegal export of iron ore.

An $85 billion expansion of the iron ore industry in Australia will not depress the price of the crucial steelmaking ingredient because the major producers will simply curtail their outputs. Martin Place Securities head of research Greg Burns told AAP the current wave of Australia-wide expansions that could effectively double current capacity of 465Mt to one billion tonnes by December 2016 will not have an upward effect on prices because the major producers will simply pull back on production to tighten up supply. Nor will some of the planned projects get off the ground, he predicts. Sky News reports:

The Mongolian government is discussing possible changes to a 2009 investment agreement for the massive Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold deposit, media reports quoted Mongolia's finance minister, S. Bayartsogt, as saying Tuesday. The 2009 deal gave a 66 percent stake in the multibillion-dollar Oyu Tolgoi project in Mongolia's South Gobi region to the Canadian miner Ivanhoe Mines (Toronto: IVN.TO - news) , in which mining giant Rio Tinto now owns a 48.5 percent stake. The government has the remaining 34 percent stake.

Diamond producer De Beers expects global demand growth for rough diamonds to set a new record this year on the exceptionally strong performance of its key US market and robust demand in China and India, the head of the company’s distribution arm said. Despite global volatility and concerns that the global economy is sliding towards another financial crisis, demand for diamonds was unlikely to be badly impacted because of its safe-haven appeal, Diamond Trading Co (DTC) Chief Executive Varda Shine told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

The Indian state of Goa is looking to technology as a way to prevent the illegal transport of iron ore. The Times of India reports that the Goa government is examining the possibility of installing radio frequency identification (RFID) tags on mining trucks to track the vehicle's movement carrying iron ore, as a part of the measures to curb transportation of illegal iron ore in the state.

The Hindu Business Line reports disproportionate price increases of fertilizers are clearly playing out, with sales of di-ammonium phosphate (DAP) falling 21.6% and muriate of potash (MOP) plunging 58% during the kharif (monsoon) planting season. The more than 50 million small farmers in India that depend on the soil nutrient have also had to contend with a weak rupee that caused domestic MOP prices to rise by as much as 91%. India imports some 6 million tonnes of potash a year with current pricing around the $500/tonne level. Chinese and Indian consumption drove the potash price from $100/tonne in 2004 to almost $900/tonne in the run up to the 2008 recession when the boom went bust and prices rapidly fell back to $350/tonne.

New economic numbers from India, the latest forecasts for the country's voracious appetite for gold, iron ore and in particular coal and its plans for a sovereign wealth fund to look at mining deals abroad mean that the GVK-Rinehart tie-up could be the first of many.