Frik Els , Editor

Balkan Insight reports that thirty miners have fasted for the last three days in a gallery 1,400m below the surface and 260m below sea level inside the chromium mine in the town Bulqiza, Albania. The hunger strike is an escalation of a three-week shutdown, as roughly 700 miners press Albanian Chrome, the largest employer in the country, to meet their requests of a 20% wage hike. The Bulqiza chromium deposit has been continuously mined since 1948. The Balkan state has the lowest GDP per capita in Europe.

December gold futures traded at a record $1,633 on Friday morning before pulling back to the $1,625 level by early afternoon lifted by 11th hour political wrangling about the US debt plan, news that Great Recession in that country was deeper than previously thought and the Euro debt crisis spreading to Spain. Silver tracked gold with September contracts adding 48 cents, or 1.2%, to trade at $40.28 an ounce early on before slipping back to below $40 by early afternoon. The S&P 500 was poised to drop for a third straight month, the longest slump since 2008.

Investors rewarded Centerra Gold on Friday after the company reported it more than doubled net profits at $71.1 million on revenues of $243.8 million, up over 60% compared to the same quarter last year and announced a special and annual dividend payment of $99.3 million. Centerra Gold, which owns gold properties in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia and has earn-in agreements in Nevada and Turkey, added 1% by midday Friday and was one of the few gainers among precious metals miners. Sector heavyweights Goldcorp and Kinross lost over 1.5% while Barrick was also trading weaker despite a rampant gold price.

Silver Wheaton, the global number one silver streaming firm, announced on Thursday that it is revising its 2011 attributable silver equivalent production guidance from 27 to 28 million silver equivalent ounces to 25 to 26 million silver equivalent ounces. Stock in the company on the Toronto exchange ended little changed on Thursday, but is down 9.5% so far this year which means investors have taken more than a $1 billion knock. Silver Wheaton expects its 2015 attributable production to grow by 17 million ounces.

Reuters reports high crude prices have dented global oil demand in the second quarter according to oil majors BP, Shell and ConocoPhillips, in a trend likely to be repeated in the second half of the year if prices stay high. Brent oil prices spiked to $127 a barrel in April, close to the all-time high of $147. However, the price oil sands exporters receive weakened further against the global benchmark on Thursday with West Texas Intermediate fetching $97 as the first of 60 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve reach markets.

China Briefing News reports state-owned Shenhua, the leader of a joint Chinese, Mongolian, Russian, and US consortium awarded the western block of Mongolia's Tavan Tolgoi coking coal field – the world's largest – faces a rocky road ahead to bring the project to fruition. According to CBN the political structuring is typical but none of the three operators have given public explanations as to how they may proceed or even work together. While losing bidders from Brazil, India and South Korea are smarting, Japan have gone so far as to call the bidding process'extremely regrettable'. And all this while Mongolia hopes to raise as much as $5 billion privatizing Tavan Tolgoi early next year.

The Huntington News reports Thursday two protesters associated with the portentous Radical Action for Mountain People's Survival Campaign, continue to occupy trees within the Bee Tree surface mine's blasting zone, where they have stopped mining for eight days.   The Bee Tree mine is situated on the aptly named Coal River Mountain in West Virginia and is owned by Alpha Resources, the company that bought the original owners of the mine, Massey Energy which last year was responsible for the worst US mine disaster in 40-years after keeping fraudulent safety records.

Stocks of London-listed Sirius Minerals, the potash development group with assets in the US, Australia and the UK, jumped 5% on Wednesday after announcing financial results for the year to end March and raising £24.3 million. The company hopes to mine the UK’s only seam of potash and has started drilling in the North York Moors National Park where it has secured mineral rights for 631 sq km of land. Sirius said York Potash has the potential to turn it into a tier one potash producer.

Despite a flurry of mergers and acquisitions and a robust IPO market reports out on Wednesday suggest that fear is slowly replacing greed in the mining finance business. The Financial Post reports for investment bankers, the low-hanging fruit is long gone and the biggest financings are now high-risk: gold juniors in Africa, coal in Colombia and an infamous Quebec lithium play that overstated its resource. Global Mining Finance's July round-up says untrustworthy financial and resource reporting, threats of new royalty regimes, "super-profit" and carbon taxes, political turmoil, strikes and government takeovers are worrying resource investors all around the world.

The Zimbabwean reports Angloplat, the world's number one producer said it was optimistic about coming to an agreement with the Zimbabwean government over its Unki mine and Aquarius Platinum's record quarter was thanks to the performance of its Mimosa mine in Zimbabwe amid continuing talks. The government of Zimbabwe, the country with the largest platinum reserves outside number one producer South Africa, is demanding 51% of all foreign-owned mines operating in the country under its so-called indigenisation laws.