Revocation of Australia’s largest coal mine licence ‘a sabotage’ — Abbot

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. JEC +3.06%announced today that it received new contracts in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2011 from seven clients in the Alberta Oil Sands to support steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) and bitumen upgrading expansion projects. Officials estimate the combined total construction value of the awarded projects at more than $1.4 billion. Project scopes include engineering procurement and construction (EPC), front end engineering and design (FEED), fabrication and construction management (CM) on a variety of mid- and large-cap projects.

Australia Labor Party pushed the carbon tax through the lower house of Parliament on Wednesday in a close vote of 74 to 72. Protestors in the public gallery shouted and tried to disrupt the proceedings. Opposition Leader Tony Abbott of the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia accused Prime Minister Julia Gillard of lying to the Australian people during last year's election, an election which Gillard narrowly won.

Loading up the global warming argument with righteousness is harming the cause, says a blogger at the Philospher’s Beard. “The moralisation approach […]

The Australia Coal Association makes a pitch for coal with a recent video on YouTube showing how important the industry is to Australia and the country's ecocomy. Coal has been under pressure from the left-leaning Australian Labor Party. The government recently introduced a carbon tax set to kick in 2012. The coal industry claims that the tax will hurt the industry and shut down mining operations.

World energy consumption is set to grow 53% by 2035 and most of that energy will be coming from fossil fuels, according to a study by the U.S. Energy Information Administration. While energy consumption will grow slowly in the U.S. and Europe, countries like China and India that are growing their industrial base will be gobbling up more and more energy.

Edmonton Journal reports that regional planning directors are considering LRT, light rail transport, to solve traffic jams along Highway 63. As more workers pour up north to work on the oil sands projects, workers are becoming snarled in traffic since the roads lack capacity. "[Officials] say something needs to be done about mobility issues that could impede the region's economic growth, with some estimates indicating an hour of traffic congestion costs oil companies $20,000 to $50,000."

Australia on Monday gave environmental approval for BHP Billiton to expand its Olympic Dam mine but set more than 100 environmental conditions on the uranium, copper and gold project. The $30 billion expansion of the existing Olympic Dam underground operation will create an adjacent open pit mine that would be the worlds biggest. An idea of the olympian effort required to construct the mine and the size of the undertaking is clear from the fact that trucks will haul overburden 24/7 for five to six years just to reach the ore body. The combined operations would mine 72 Mt ore per year and would produce 750,000 tonnes refined copper, 19,000 tonnes uranium oxide, 800,000 gold ounces and 2.9 Moz of silver per year.

Gold for December delivery traded up $37.30, or 2.3%, at $1,673.10 an ounce on the New York Mercantile Exchange in early afternoon trade Monday, after climbing more than $40 earlier to touch an intraday high of $1,676.70. Gold's gains come amid strong buying during China's Golden Week despite the fact that buyers have to contend with bullion that is $300/oz more expensive than last year. Traders reported that the price of gold has been moving up and down in sync with the S&P 500 in the last four sessions, while the safe-haven buying that spurred the metal's three-year rally was largely absent. Other precious metals also benefited from a near 2% drop in the dollar index.

Reuters reports China will extend a resource tax – calculated on value rather than volume of production – on domestic sales of crude oil and natural gas from some regions to the whole country and expand the list of taxable resources to coking coal and rare earths from November 1. The move, billed as a way of conserving resources and limiting environmental damage, is part of a long-awaited tax reform that would enrich the coffers of local governments but slash the earnings of resource companies, such as PetroChina Co, China National Petroleum Corp and Baotou Steel Rare Earths by billions of dollars each year. The tax on rare-earth ores will be levied according to a wide range of between yuan 0.4 – 60 per ton and between yuan 8 – 20 a tonne on coking coal.