Main water source for Canada’s oil sands may run dry — study

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.

Ever since Friday's New York Times report saying the US State Department assigned an important environmental impact study of the Keystone XL pipeline to Cardno Entrix, a company with financial ties to the pipeline operator TransCanada, in contravention of federal law, opponents of the project have shifted the focus of their opposition to allegations of conflict of interest and corruption. Two prominent names on the political left and in the green movement Naomi Klein and Bill McKibben put it most bluntly: Obama's plan to transport oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast reeks of cronyism and it is quite possibly the biggest potential scandal of the Obama years. TransCanada officials meanwhile appear to have been caught off guard by the vociferous protests that weeks of Keystone hearings that ended on Friday have elicited, pointing out that TransCanada won approval for a similar pipeline three years ago with little opposition.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports Australia's Gillard government has opened the week of the crucial vote on carbon tax by revealing that big fuel users such as airlines want to sign on to the scheme, while the coal industry counterattacked with a report estimating that the tax risks the jobs of 21,000 miners. The government's bid to boost the carbon tax comes as a new coal industry-commissioned report says the tax would force the premature closure of 17 per cent of existing black-coal mines in Australia, including 15 in NSW. Today the Australian Coal Association will release the results of an ACIL Tasman consultants study that concludes an estimated 27 per cent of employment in coalmining projects would be under threat with a carbon tax.

The Wall Street Journal reports Mongolia is relaunching talks with international miners on developing the western block of Tavan Tolgoi in the South Gobi desert, the world’s largest deposit of high-quality coking coal used in steelmaking. Mongolia's National Security Council rejected a deal struck with US giant Peabody Energy, China's Shenhua and a Russian-Mongolian consortium mid-September, just two months after they were announced as winners. At the time losing bidders from Brazil, India and South Korea raised serious concerns and Japan went so far as to call the bidding process 'extremely regrettable'. Mongolia still hopes to privatize its Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi coal-mining company which controls the remainder of the 6 billion tonne resource for upwards of $3 billion next year.

Does gold's precipitous $300 drop in September represent a fundamental market shift? It is hard to argue with this statement: "Global stock markets are volatile, central banks have not regained credibility, inflation is still a concern, and trust in the markets has not been restored. Yet gold continues to fall... Gold has lost its shine."

A new report from research firm TNS could have implications for mining. A survey of affluent households around the world — defined as greater than $100,000 — found that 80% of the world's wealthy live in Western countries.TNS's Global Affluenty Investor study conducted interviews across 24 markets including China, Brazil and India.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a senior Republican senator representing South Carolina, urged the Obama administration to support the Keystone XL oilsands pipeline. Graham, who was speaking at a political event on Wednesday, said that if the U.S. rejects the pipeline, it would be ". . . one of the biggest energy policy blunders in our history." The senator said that the pipeline has the potential to create thousands of jobs, and rejecting the development would have serious consequences for Obama's chances at re-election.

The US coal industry scored a victory in court Thursday after a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration did not have authority to tighten oversight of permits used by coal mining companies that do "mountaintop mining." The ruling by the U.S. District Court says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act when it issued tougher environmental guidelines related to fill material dumped into streams after the tops of mountains are blasted off to extract underlying coal seams," reported The Wall Street Journal. The National Mining Association sued the EPA last year over the issue.