New technology, automation to help miners survive commodity prices rout

In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, Senior Analyst Jocelyn August discusses looming events in a select group of natural resource stocks that are expected to move as information flows out.

US Oil Sands Inc's Utah project is on-target for completion and start-up in the final quarter of next year after the company raised $9 million on Thursday.

Indonesia has decided to have its mining cake and eat it too, as the country, one of the world’s largest exporters of copper and coal, will start imposing a 20% tax on mining exports beginning next week.

Draft legislation, a copy of which was seen by the Financial Times on Wednesday, gave "the clearest sign yet that Mongolia is uncomfortable with the large foreign investments that have so far been a mainstay of economic growth."

Colombia’s leading coal producers are increasing investments dramatically to improve and expand their ports, in what is considered a key move for rising coal production in the country to 120 million tons within by 2014.

BHP Billiton addressed shareholder concerns about its ambitious investment plans in four mega-projects on Wednesday saying it will match capital expenditures closely with cash flows and stagger the project pipeline.

There is no such thing as an average miner.  There is no such thing as an average salary.  Yet we can get some idea of how well mining people are paid by looking at the average salaries for 2011 on US metal mines recently published CostMine.

There are conventionally 2,080 work hours in a year. Thus somebody earning a wage of $20 an hour gets the equivalent of a salary of about $42,000. Considering the mine manager makes about $100,000 to $150,000 a year, it is interesting to take a look at actual wages paid to miners in the United States in 2011.

Blaming severe weakness in U.S. thermal coal markets, Arch Coal, Inc. (NYSE: ACI) today reported first quarter 2012 net income of $1.2 million, or $0.01 per diluted share, compared with net income of $55.6 million, or $0.34 per diluted share, in the prior-year period.