Decision comes two weeks after the country's top court kept in place a more than 14-month suspension of operations at the company's Escobal silver mine.

A company owned by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov is in talks to raise $1.25 billion from Russian banks by the start of 2019 to build a massive mining and metallurgical plant at Russia's biggest untapped copper deposit.

Tamar Resources wants to reopen the state-owned Krupinski mine in Silesia as a coking coal mine.

Spurred by high global appetite for cooper, the company in September started preparing the site for construction of a massive plant at the deposit.

Environment and Natural Resources Secretary ordered all small-scale mining stopped in the Cordillera region, where landslides killed 24 people.

Eskom said on Monday that it had fewer than 20 days of coal supplies at 10 of its 15 coal-fired power stations, posing a threat to national power supplies.

The United States has thrown Russian aluminium company Rusal a lifeline by loosening sanctions imposed on the company in April.

Three-year wage deal may inch the country's gold industry a closer to ending a standoff over pay.

About $816 million will be invested in Peru, including $555 million in copper projects and $216 million in zinc.

The government considers minerals with the "strategic" designation important for the economic, social and industrial future of the country.

The project, which would become the European Union's only open-cast uranium mine if given the go-ahead, has faced local opposition since it was proposed.

Hydro, which is not interested in acquiring aluminium plants that use coal-fired power, was hoping the deal would be part of efforts to make its output as green as possible.