Gold

MINING.com counts more than 90 billionaires involved in minerals, metals and mining on the planet with a combined wealth of well over $300 billion.

Mining contributed $50 billion to the country’s GDP in 2011, he said, and provides “well paying” jobs for more than 300,000 Canadians.

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.