Billionaire Anil Agarwal sells Anglo stake

Brazillian miner Vale SA said Tuesday it is gradually resuming mining at its underground nickel operations in Sudbury, Canada.

After over two months of futile negotiations behind closed doors between Chile's state-owned copper giant Codelco and global miner Anglo American, a resolution of the dispute that have seen both parties sunk in a legal battle seems far off, said Codelco's CEO Diego Hernandez to a local daily.

Fortescue Metals was up 5% Monday on rumours that Canadian coal and copper/zinc miner Teck Resources is making a play for the third-largest iron ore producer in Australia.

The Philippines is taking a cue from South Africa, Australia and Zambia, all recent examples of government attempts to extract more revenues from their mining sectors and add more controls.

Gordon G. Chang, gloomy prognosticator on China, digs into trade numbers on copper and believes the Chinese are buying copper to gussy up their trade deficit numbers, rather than having a real need for the metal.

Canadian copper-zinc producer Inmet Mining earned a third less profit in the fourth quarter than the same period a year ago.

After achieving a toe-hold in Afghanistan with the award of a major iron ore contract, Indian companies are turning their attention to the troubled country's copper and gold reserves.

Record annual earnings of more than $2 billion released today by key global copper producer Southern Copper Corp (NYSE:SCCO), were overshadowed by the company’s decision of pushing back the beginning of its operation at the $1 billion Tia Maria project until 2015.

BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP), the world’s largest mining company, expects to increase production at its Escondida copper mine in Chile to over 1.3Mt/y in the 2015 financial year, said CEO Marius Kloppers yesterday in a webcast to discuss fiscal H1 results.