Move over gold, diamonds may become one of the greatest safe-havens

A freeze on licenses to explore for minerals is no small matter in Mongolia, a country undergoing a huge resources boom, as miners such as Anglo-Australian giant Rio Tinto (RIO) and the Chinese-backed Shenhua Group compete for the right to extract coal, copper, gold, molybdenum, and uranium. It is a resource play that is expected to bring a flood of money into the impoverished country over the next decade, centered around huge mining projects such as the Shivee Ovoo and Tavan Tolgoi coal reserves, estimated to be worth $300 billion and $400 billion, respectively, and the copper and gold mine Oyu Tolgoi, worth some $300 billion. (Image is of the Nadaam Festival, traditional Mongolian wrestling in Central Mongolia. Photograph by Oksana Perkins taken on July 10, 2009 / Shutterstock.com.)

Chinese state-owned company Dafeng Port Group plans to set up a ferronickel industry in Kotabaru, South Kalimantan with a production capacity of 200 million metric tons a year. The president director of Dafeng Port Group Co. Ltd., Ni Xiangrong, said here on Saturday the Dafeng Port Group Co.Ltd. has successfully developed an integrated economic zone in China and plan to build a ferronickel industry and its support industries in Kotabaru.

JSW Energy Ltd., the Indian power producer controlled by the billionaire Jindal family, delayed expansion of an electricity project because of high coal costs. The company will shelve a planned 3,200-megawatt expansion at a plant in Ratnagiri in the western state of Maharashtra as it waits for coal-pricing “clarity” from Indonesia and Australia, Chief Executive Officer Lalit Kumar Gupta said in an interview in Mumbai yesterday.

According to the World Steel Association (WSA), production of steel in China during the January-June period of the current year stood at 350.543 MT, almost half of world output during the same period and the single highesat by any country.

Stocks of Canadian potash juniors Allana, Passport and Western Potash all showed double digit gains for the week to Thursday as the heavyweight producers all announce significant contract price gains and their export arm appears to run out of inventories altogether. This after Bloomberg quoted the CEO of Mosaic as saying the Canpotex "cupboard is bare" and that the sensitive issue of fertilizer deliveries to India's 55 million farmers is not being discussed at the moment.

Freeport-McMoRan reported a doubling of profits at $1.4 billion in the second quarter, but the blow-out results did not satisfy investors who shaved more than 1.5% off the stock amid record gold prices and a positive day on the markets. The company said labour action at its Grasberg mine – the globe's largest copper-gold mine – hurt output. During the eight-day strike in July, the company lost about 35 million pounds of copper production and 60 thousand ounces of gold production which could hurt its next set of results.

Newcrest Mining, Australia's largest gold mining company, reported on Thursday that gold production rose 16% to 700,124 ounces during its June quarter. Copper production was slightly higher than the previous quarter at 20,127 tonnes. The company said cash costs of A$542 per ounce were higher than the previous quarter due to higher site costs and lower copper byproduct credits per ounce.

PT Freeport Indonesia (PTFI) Geo Services Division recently enhanced the slope monitoring system at Grasberg mine with the purchase of two IBIS-M radars. “Grasberg mine is one of the few mines in the world that utilises very high-technology monitoring equipment to help detect slope movements. The IBIS-M radars are top-of-the-line radars, using technology that is accurate to within approximately 0.1 mm, with coverage at some 2 km an area around 5 km square, and operating range of 10 m to 4,000 m,” explained PTFI Superintendent - Geotechnical Pit Engineering and Stability Rahadian Widiadi.

Harmony Gold Mining upgraded the resource estimate for its Wafi-Golpu project in Papua New Guinea on Wednesday increasing it by 57% to over 1 billion metric tons, making it one of the highest grade copper-gold porphyry systems in South East Asia. CEO Graham Briggs said it was a "game-changing asset" for the company and the latest drilling results bring the Wafi-Golpu deposits within sight of Freeport-McMoran’s Grasberg mine across the border in West Papua, Indonesia, which was recently hit by strikes.