Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said Thursday the country's copper giant Codelco will remain state-owned in a bid to ease fears that the company will be privatized. Codelco, the world's largest copper-producing company, "belongs to all Chileans," and any attempt to privatize it was to be ruled out, Pinera said.

According to the World Steel Association (WSA), production of steel in China during the January-June period of the current year stood at 350.543 MT, almost half of world output during the same period and the single highesat by any country.

The Canadian government is set to spend Canadian $ 50 million per year ($ 53 million) on monitoring and controlling of air and water pollution from its oil sands projects in northern Alberta, in a bid to accelerate the US decision to allow a TransCanada crude oil pipeline transportation project to the Gulf Coast.

Canadian Orebodies Inc. (TSX VENTURE:CO) ("Orebodies") has started drilling on its Haig Inlet Iron Ore Project, located on the Belcher Islands, Nunavut, Canada.

Workers at BHP Billiton Ltd. (BHP)’s Escondida copper mine, the world’s biggest, began striking as coal miners at the company’s Australian operations prepared to escalate industrial action. The strike by all union members at the northern Chilean mine began at 8 p.m. New York time yesterday with the changing of a shift and will run through to 8 p.m. today, which may lead to about 3,000 metric tons of lost copper production, union leader Jose Vidal said by telephone. Image of BHP's Escondida mine is by BHP Billiton.

Kalgoorlie Mining Company ( ASX: KMC ) has been granted de-watering approval for the Bullant Gold Mine from the Department of Environment and Conservation.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. is studying further expansion of mining and milling operations at Morenci, the company said today as it announced that its second-quarter profit doubled.

Copper futures retreated Thursday, snapping Wednesday’s rally to a three-month high, as negative sentiment over China’s economic future outweighed better-than-expected US manufacturing data.

Stocks of Canadian potash juniors Allana, Passport and Western Potash all showed double digit gains for the week to Thursday as the heavyweight producers all announce significant contract price gains and their export arm appears to run out of inventories altogether. This after Bloomberg quoted the CEO of Mosaic as saying the Canpotex "cupboard is bare" and that the sensitive issue of fertilizer deliveries to India's 55 million farmers is not being discussed at the moment.