Trade wars, metals, and you

BHP's four largest projects – Olympic Dam, the Outer Harbour iron ore infrastructure project in Australia, expansion of its US shale gas operations and Jansen potash in Saskatchewan, Canada – require $120 billion in capex costs, but will only start to contribute to the bottom line by 2023.

A small number of investment professionals around the world are competing behind the scenes to turn the gem into a commodity that would be available to investors in the way that gold has been traded through funds on exchanges.

For metals consultancy Thomson Reuters GFMS’s Paul Walker, looking to hedge from a position of strength would serve miners well when prices do eventually fall.

Hollinger pit project moving forward yet many Timmins people seem unaware.

Gold futures trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange experienced an after-hours selloff on Friday with prices tumbling $20 in a flurry of end-of week liquidation.

Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto not only have to deal with higher projected mining and processing costs at the mega-mine but also development delays and most worryingly, lower ore grades.

Harmony Gold briefly dropped to a year low of $9.68 on Friday after the company announced a steep fall-off in output for the first quarter. Now worth $4.4 billion the counter is down a third in a year, but its Papua New Guinea project may be worth that by itself.

Output from the resources industry in the African nation is now the lowest since 1961, the year South Africa left the British Commonwealth and declared itself a republic

The melting ice cap in the Arctic sea could open up access to immense mineral reserves, attracting billions of dollars in investment, but also bringing with it unique risks and challenges, says Lloyd’s/Chatham House latest Risk Insight report.