NASA’s latest mission may tell us whether asteroid mining is really a go

The Province of Alberta and Swan Hills Synfuels are advancing a clean gas for clean power project that will dramatically reduce emissions by capturing and sequestering over 1.3 million tonnes per year of CO2. The province has executed a letter of intent with Swan Hills Synfuels to provide a $285 million grant in support of this carbon capture and storage project.

Universal Coal (ASX: UNV) has moved to a direct 40% ownership of the Berenice Coking Coal Project and the Somerville project in South Africa, post the completion of the first phase of drilling and the updated resource estimate - which was completed by GEMECS. The significance of the ownership for Universal Coal is that Berenice hosts a coking coal JORC Resource of over one billion tonnes, with 218 million tonnes Indicated and 840 million tonnes Inferred.

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.

Mongolia's state-owned miner Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi (TT) has agreed to sell $250 million worth of coal from the east Tsankhi deposit to Aluminium Corp of China Ltd (Chalco) , a move insiders said was aimed at raising cash to help fund its impending listing fees. Under the agreement, Chalco would resell 30 percent of the coal to Japanese trading houses Itochu Corp and Mitsui as well as state-owned Korea Resources Corp (KORES), Erdenes TT LLC said in a statement seen on Wednesday.

Shri Beni Prasad Verma, Union Minister for Steel, said that India will become the world's second largest producer of steel by 2013.

FLSmidth has been awarded a contract worth approximately EUR 25m (approximately DKK 180m) by Jhabua Power Ltd. for the supply and installation of the first phase of a 1,800 tons per hour coal handling plant for their upcoming power plant project at Jhabua in the state of Madhya Pradesh in central India.

Patriot Coal Corporation (NYSE: PCX) today reported its financial results for the quarter ended June 30, 2011. For the 2011 second quarter, the Company reported record revenues of $632.2 million and record EBITDA of $70.2 million. Revenues and EBITDA for the year-ago quarter were $539.0 million and $40.6 million, respectively. For the six months ended June 30, 2011, the Company reported revenues of $1.2 billion and EBITDA of $118.8 million. Revenues and EBITDA for the first half of 2010 were $1.0 billion and $85.8 million, respectively.

The US government has approved a new wireless communication system from Lockheed Martin that enables trapped miners and rescue workers to communicate during a disaster as safe to use in mines.

A landmark victory in the Federal Court looks set to give unions more power to bargain on behalf of workers at Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton iron ore operations in the Pilbara. The full bench of the court has ruled that a non-union collective agreement covering workers in Rio Tinto's operations was invalid. Yesterday's decision casts doubt on similar agreements at BHP and other operations in the mining region, involving thousands of workers.