Replenishing economic diamond resources, a daunting task for miners

Gold Fields’ attributable group production for the June quarter is expected to be around 872,000 gold equivalent oz, up 5% from 830,000 gold equivalent oz in Q1, the South African miner said Tuesday. During Q2, production from the country’s South Africa region was affected by six public holidays as well as two significant seismic-related accidents at the Kloof Driefontein Complex mine, which resulted in production stoppages due to safety interventions, the company said.

The introduction of improvement to the Sena railroad would cost over US$200 million and take at least 18 months, the chairman of Mozambican port and rail company, Portos e Caminhos de Ferro de Moçambique, said Tuesday in Maputo. Brazilian mining group Vale and Australia’s Riversdale Mining have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in coal mining projects in Tete province and plan to use the Sena railroad to transport the coal to the port of Beira.

South Africa's role in getting Zimbabwe's diamonds back into international trade is being slammed as "dangerous", amid revelations that government officials there have helped export millions of dollars worth of Zim diamonds. South Africa's State Diamond Trader officials admitted in parliament last week that they had helped Zimbabwe export diamonds from Chiadzwa, despite an international ban on the trade.

Unrest and strikes in Indonesia, Chile, Australia and Africa, a shortage of skilled workers in North America and rising labour costs all over the globe are quickly becoming the most serious downsides of a mining boom that started almost a decade ago. While a historically high overall jobless rate is masking spiking wages in the resources sector in the US, workers in emerging markets are shutting down operations of mining companies deemed not to be sharing record profits fairly.

Australia-based iron ore development company African Iron Limited (ASX: AKI) is pleased to announce a greater than 80% increase to the aggregate exploration target size at its 80%-owned Mayoko Iron Ore Project, located in the Republic of Congo, West Africa. Image of a drilling rig at the Mayoko Iron Ore Project, by African Iron Limited.

Reuters reports Zimbabwe could take over mines that fall short of laws requiring them to sell majority stakes to locals by September, a government minister said on Wednesday. Mineral-rich Zimbabwe has the world's second largest known platinum reserves after neighbouring South Africa and foreign miners working there include Zimplats Holdings, a unit of Impala Platinum, global mining giant Rio Tinto, and Anglo Platinum.

Perth-based coal miner Coal of Africa (LON:CZA) has secured a key environmental permit from the South African government, clearing a major hurdle on the way to restarting its Vele coking coal project. The approval will allow the company to proceed with construction work at the site following a year long delay due to environmental issues.

A new report by Global Data on the top 2011 oil and gas investment destinations claims as much as 22% of the world's undiscovered and technically recoverable oil and gas could lie within Arctic territories. Oil and mineral wealth coupled with the opening of new shipping routes are transforming cities and towns in the region. Apart from the Arctic and Canada's oil sands where new projects could up current production of 1.7m bpd by another 2.7m bpd, new discoveries in Ghana, Uganda and other parts of Africa which remain largely unexplored are also attracting billions in investment from foreign oil and gas companies.

The Sowetan reports Tanzania will begin uranium mining in its southern Selous Game Reserve, Africa’s second-largest wildlife sanctuary and a Unesco heritage site (pictured), the energy minister said Tuesday. Australia’s Mantra Resources will start mining in late 2012 in the southern part of the 54,600-square kilometre park estimated to have 53.9 million pounds of uranium oxide deposits which is worth some $2.9bn at current market prices. The minister claimed that mining would only involve about 1% of the park's overall area and that income accrued from mining would help fund upkeep of the park, but environmentalists have slammed the plan.