The ever diminishing ambitions of BHP Billiton

Bloomberg reported that Billionaire Mr Ziyavudin Magomedov Summa Group won the right to build a RUB 44.3 billion section of a railroad to coal fields in East Siberia near deposits to be developed by Evraz Plc and OAO Severstal.

The Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement on Thursday, together with Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, announced $485 million is being given to states and tribes to eliminate health and safety hazards caused by past coal mining.

Job seekers in the Australian mining and construction industry were likely to benefit from a favourable hiring climate in the first quarter of 2012, said recruitment solutions provider Manpower.

The intensity of oilsands carbon emissions — the amount of greenhouse gases created per every barrel of oil produced — increased by two per cent between 2009 and 2010, according to an industry report.

Chiquita Brands International will work with ForestEthics to eliminate shipping of Chiquita bananas with fuel from refineries that use Canada’s controversial Tar Sands. Chiquita joins a market trend against Tar Sands that now includes 15 publicly confirmed actions by major US companies.

Canada is sitting on nearly 4% of the world's coal resources, with at least 80 billion tonnes of exploitable coal and 8 billion tonnes classified as commercially feasible under today's conditions.

At a news conference in early November, Overheard reports that Vladimir Putin became quite critical of hydraulic fracturing claiming that the practice causes too much damage to the environment.

Australian Paladin Energy (ASX:PDN) sees its ambitions of becoming a major uranium mining house a step closer. After three years of stand-by due to a moratorium on uranium mining on indigenous lands in Labrador, Canada, the Perth-based miner is able to start operations in the area in 2012.

B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan are preparing a "Canadian energy strategy" to present to Ottawa by this spring.