Big Coal scores win against Obama Admin

The US coal industry scored a victory in court Thursday after a federal judge ruled that the Obama administration did not have authority to tighten oversight of permits used by coal mining companies that do "mountaintop mining." The ruling by the U.S. District Court says the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) "exceeded its authority under the Clean Water Act when it issued tougher environmental guidelines related to fill material dumped into streams after the tops of mountains are blasted off to extract underlying coal seams," reported The Wall Street Journal. The National Mining Association sued the EPA last year over the issue.

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Government Encourages Queenslanders to Train up for the Mining Boom

Queensland Premier Anna Bligh is encouraging Queenslanders to explore their training and employment opportunities in the resources boom through a media-wide advertising campaign, reports Australian Mining.

QLD Premier Anna Bligh said in a statement the Government expected as many as 38,000 construction and operation jobs to be created in the resource industry between now and 2015. She said the Government also estimated there were up to 3,500 current vacancies in the industry. “I want every Queenslander to have the chance to gain from this boom and that is what these ads are designed to help them do,” she said. Bligh said the advertisements would direct people to the Government’s opportunities website where they could register for the Resources 101 course, get information on upcoming work expos, and search for jobs.

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Forget pricing, politics and pipelines – there’s a much bigger threat to the oil sands

Even if both Keystone XL and Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipelines are built, bitumen is expensive to extract and cannot compete with the many new shale oil plays – particularly in the Bakken oil basin where studies put the recoverable oil at 24 billion barrels – which have pushed US production to its highest level in a decade. No wonder Enbridge – busy building out its capacity in Bakken while Northern Gateway wallows in the approval process – said "it's the wild west out there at the moment."

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Keystone Industries could hire more workers if the permitting would hurry up: Scholl

Tom Scholl, CEO of Keystone Industries, told CNBC that he could put more people to work but the U.S. federal government is standing in the way. Scholl said the states are working "pretty close" with the mining companies. It is the federal government that is holding up mining and not working fast enough on permitting. Scholl singled out the US Army Corp of Engineers as creating the slowdown. "We are the Saudi Arabia of coal in the United Stats. It is a great export commodity. And any time you export it it is going to create a lot of jobs."

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Pebble Mine gets referendum results on Tuesday

Northern Dynasty's proposed Pebble Mine hears from local residents on Tuesday when the results of a referendum will be announced. Residents in southwest Alaska, the Lake and Peninsula Borough, are being asked to ban the granting of mine permits that could significantly impact salmon streams. While a successful referendum would be a set back to Pebble mine, the referendum results are not the last word. It is one of many decision points that the mine has to face. Regulatory bodies, the judiciary and other levels of government still have to weigh in.

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Brazil must choose between potash and oil

Vale announced this week it is investing $15 billion to expand fertilizer production joining a Canadian merchant bank promoting a $4 billion potash project in the Amazon basin. There's just one problem: the land is owned by Brazil's state oil company Petrobras and they've also found oil there.

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