Laricina Energy announced on Wednesday it intends to raise between $250m and $400m by selling common shares at $40 to $45 each in a private placement. Laricina was started by executives of Deer Creek Energy after it was sold to French oil giant Total in 2005 for $1.67bn. Canada Pension Plan acquired 17% of the privately-held oil sands developer for $250m last year. This round of fund raising is expected to push back a possible public listing of Laricina to 2012.

Colombia Crest Gold Corp. (TSX VENTURE:CLB)(PINK SHEETS:ECRTF)(FRANKFURT:EAT) is pleased to announce the discovery of porphyry gold-style alteration in the first of nine target zones being explored on the Fredonia and Venecia properties (see news release dated April 12, 2011). Alteration mapping of the highest-priority target, now named "Arabia", has delineated an area of quartz-sericite-pyrite alteration with dimensions 700 meters east-west by 900 meters north-south which is surrounded by a halo of propylitic alteration. Image by Colombia Crest Gold Corp.

Stillwater Mining Company (NYSE: SWC), commenting on today's significant strengthening in palladium and platinum prices, indicated that the market outlook for increasing demand and constrained production underlies the significant move in metal prices today.

Bloomberg reports gold may decline for a second day in New York as speculation that Greece’s debt crisis is closer to being resolved curbs demand for precious metals. The market news is quoted as saying, Palladium for September delivery was little changed at $781.50 an ounce. Platinum for July delivery was 0.2 percent lower at $1,830.80 an ounce.

Osisko Mining official inaugurated the Canadian Malartic gold mine, a large-scale open pit mine located in Malartic, Abitibi. Canadian Malartic is Osisko's first mine to go into production. Osisko estimates it will extract more than 9 million ounces of gold at Canadian Malartic from now until 2027. The mine currently employs 465 people.

Commission on Higher Education chief Secretary Patricia Licuanan is offering students scholarships to take courses towards the 'most employable' careers in the Philippines, which include mining, aeronautics, geology and software engineering, reports the Philippine Information Agency.

"(These) are jobs but they are very hard to fill so if you go into these areas you are guaranteed to find employment," Licuanan said. She said these courses are among the agency's "priorities" in its list of scholarship beneficiaries, adding that CHED has also removed all the "oversubscribed" courses from the same list. "Overscubscribed" courses are business administration, nursing, teaching, IT, Hotel and Restaurant Management and maritime.

Peru's President Alan Garcia Perez and the Ministry of Energy and Mines have suspended mining concessions in several of the nation's provinces for the next 12 months. The President of the Council of Ministers Rosario Fernandez Figueroa said a multi-sectoral commission has been appointed to study and propose reforms regarding mining concessions.

Canadian mining giant Goldcorp Inc. has been recognized by Nasdaq as one of the Top 100 companies in the world for its sustainability practices. The Index is an equity-weighed index made up of 100 companies that lead in measuring and reporting their carbon footprint, energy usage, water consumption, hazardous and non-hazardous waste generation, workforce initiatives and community investment.

Mining giants warned Australia on Wednesday that its planned carbon-reduction scheme could cost the industry as much as $25 billion through 2020, cut coal production by a third and send investment in that sector tumbling 13 percent. "Australia is walking the plank," Seamus French, who runs the coal division of miner Anglo-American Plc , told a conference, a day after the Australian government's climate-change adviser suggested how carbon emissions should be taxed.