A strike appears imminent at Rio Tinto's Rssing Uranium Mine in the Namibian-Naukluft Park (pictured) after workers unhappy over production bonuses on Wednesday voted unanimously in favour of industrial action that could cripple operations at the mine responsible for some 5% of world production. Management said the demands were unreasonable and defeat logic. The industrial action takes place at a difficult time for the uranium industry with the spot price recently falling below $50 – levels last seen immediately after the nuclear accident at Fukushima. The sector has lost some 40% of its value since the Japan disaster and the first deal of what is expected to be widespread consolidation in the industry is already shaping up to be a classic David and Goliath fight.

Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold reported on Wednesday that the strike at its Grasberg operations in Papua, Indonesia, which began Sept. 15, is costing the company about 3 million pounds of copper and 5 thousand ounces of gold for each day of the work stoppage. The company says that it is negotiating a two-year extension of its bi-annual collective labour agreement, which is scheduled for renewal on September 30, 2011.

Rapid Extraction Using Alkaline Leaching Could Benefit the Economics of Project

Three years before it has yet to really produce coal, the northern Galilee Basin is already fully booked to Indian and Chinese coal mining companies. The Australian Newspaper said India's Adani Group already owns some 7.8 billion tones into the Queensland coal field, and is poised to pay an additional US$1.3 billion for a 7.9 billion-tonne coal tenement. While Australian billionaire Clive Palmer owns some 3.7 billion tones into the field, which reports say he is developing with Chinese business partners. The northern Galilee basin has a total of 20 billion tonnes production capacity.

The Hindustan Times reports that Goa's mining minister, Digambar Kamat, is being accused by the BJP party and members of his own party for participating in illegal mining. The website says the Congress is considering various options to avoid a similar situation to what happened in neighbouring Karnataka state, where the ruling BJP party was forced to dump its chief minister after a damning report accused him and other politicians of corruption in the illegal export of iron ore.

While all eyes may be on the sovereign debt crisis in Europe or the ongoing jobs and budget battle in the U.S., Ian Bremmer says that the biggest economic concern is China, the world's leading importer of both copper and iron ore. Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting firm, hears lots of criticism about the hard decisions are being put off in both Europe and the U.S., and the literal can is being kicked down the road. "The largest can that is getting kicked furthest down the road right now is clearly in Beijing," says Bremmer who spoke to Bloomberg last week.

China's position as the world's economic engine is being reinforced as expectations for growth in developed markets wane, but so is the risk a decline in its appetite for metals and minerals may mean the Asian giant won't offset any Western slowdown.

BHP Billiton chief executive Marius Kloppers’s annual pay grew by 8.5 per cent in the last financial year, to $US11.6 million ($11.37 million). The pay rise (in US dollars) came in a financial year in which the company posted a record Australian corporate profit, growing 86 per cent from the previous year to $US23.6 billion.

MPX Energia SA, the energy company controlled by Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista, said it’s targeting China as the “main market” for the coal it will produce in Colombia.