World’s largest coal miner looking to buy metal mines abroad

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.

The destruction of Mongolia's grasslands to access a wealth of mineral riches has sparked an anti-mining movement led by a nomadic herder who says force can be used to bring polluting firms to heel. Tsetsegee Munkhbayar is the head of Fire Nation, a small group on a crusade to put an end to what they say are irresponsible mining operations in the resource-rich landlocked country that are threatening their livelihoods.

SouthGobi Resources announced today that the Mineral Resource Authority of Mongolia (MRAM) has issued mining license MV-016869 to its wholly-owned Mongolian operating subsidiary SouthGobi Sands LLC. The new license pertains to the resource previously disclosed by the Company under NI 43-101 standards as the Soumber Deposit.

A Reuters feature article on Wednesday tells how forced to sell his animals and flee his dried-up lands, former herder Sainbuyangiin Tsagaan-Ovgon is now hoping mining profits will let him return to his native Gobi. The 72-year old, who admits he knows nothing about stocks, will soon receive 536 shares in the Mongolian company that owns the world's largest coking coal deposit.

India's GVK Power, a unit of infrastructure major GVK Group, which had inked a deal to purchase two of Hancock Prospecting's thermal coal mines in Australia for around $2.4 billion, is set to raise $1.2 billion as debt to part fund its acquisition. The Hyderabad-based GVK Power has roped in ICICI Bank to syndicating the $1.2 billion loan. Sanjay Reddy, vice chairman of GVK, signed an agreement with Gina Rinehart, chairman of Hancock, earlier in June.

A treasure of gold, jewelry and diamonds worth over $24 billion by some estimates has been unearthed from the vaults of a temple in India. Image is from YouTube news report on the same story.

Investigators plan to pry open the final vault hidden deep under a centuries-old Indian Hindu temple as police guarded round the clock the shrine where billions of dollars worth of treasure has been discovered. Over the last week a seven-member team of investigators has broken into five of the six secret subterranean vaults piled high with jewels that have lain untouched for hundreds of years.

According to reports more than 7,000 workers from Freeport McMoRan's massive gold and copper mine in Indonesia's western Papua region started a week-long strike on Monday to demand better wages. The Grasberg mine is the richest gold and third largest copper mine in the world and and the US company's local subsidiary is the largest single taxpayer to the Indonesian government.

Mongolia chose U.S. miner Peabody Energy , a venture between China's Shenhua and Japan's Mitsui & Co, and a Russian-led consortium as preliminary winners to jointly develop the prized Tavan Tolgoi coal deposit, a senior government source said on Monday. The project, which may require initial investment of more than $7 billion, is seen as vital to kick-start the land-locked nation's economy. It will also generate billions of dollars in revenue for the companies involved and add tens of millions of tonnes of increasingly rare coking coal used by steel makers.