Copper Mountain floats new mine plan with longer life, more output and lower cash costs

Canadian Natural Resources announced this week it is poised to restart its Horizon plant seven months after it went up in flames and aims to spend over $2 billion to more than double its capacity. The Horizon outage led to a shortage of syncrude – a light oil manufactured from bitumen – which helped Alberta's producers attract a premium of $18 above benchmark US oil prices. That nice little earner will now likely melt away and follows a Reuters poll that showed a majority of analysts and oil traders expect the spread between US and international crude prices to surpass $30 in the next year.

Mining companies are expected to invest more than $116-billion in Canada over the next five years, an industry body said on Thursday.

Canada's Northgate Minerals reported a wider quarterly net loss of $13 million hit by lower production and higher costs, and it lowered its full-year production forecast. Revenue fell 45% to $67.4 million. In July, Northgate Minerals said it would buy Primero Mining to form a new mid-tier gold producer, which will have a combined market capitalization of approximately $1.2 billion and will tie together the San Dimas mine in Mexico; the Fosterville and Stawell gold mines in Australia; and the Young-Davidson gold development project in Ontario. Investors shrugged off the news and the Vancouver-based company's shares opened barely changed in Toronto at C$3.15 on Friday giving it a market valuation of some $920 million.

Toronto’s main stock index closed down 435 points Thursday as Japanese intervention in the yen and concern over the spreading sovereign-debt crisis sent the U.S. dollar soaring, and oil and materials prices falling.

Canada's largest uranium producer lost 23% of its profits in the second quarter, as uranium sales volumes declined. In announcing its second-quarter results Thursday, Saskatoon-based Cameco also lowered its industry forecast in the wake of the Japan Fukushima nuclear crisis, which has slowed the expansion of nuclear power in Japan and resulted in Germany deciding to move away from atomic energy by phasing out and shutting down nuclear reactors.

Rio Tinto reported a surge in profits due to strong demand in Asia and higher metals prices on Thursday but shares in the company spiked lower in New York, opening down more than 7% and wiping more than $10 billion off the value of the globe's second largest miner. Net earnings for the first half year were $7.6bn, up 30% on the $5.8bn the firm made a year earlier. Commenting on the results chairman Jan du Plessis said the economic environment remains volatile but expected the Australia-based company continue to experience higher than average growth for the rest of the year. The company also said it was experiencing high cost inflation in some "mining hotspots" and cautioned that the strong Australian and Canadian dollar were impacting its profitability.

Gabriel Resources announced on Wednesday that it has accumulated over $175 million in cash and equivalents to move ahead its gold mining project in Transylvania in an area where tunnels used by Roman miners during the first century still exists. It has been more than a decade since Gabriel Resources first obtained the Rosia Montana concession, believed the be one of the richest in Europe, and the Canadian firm has faced protests since receiving an archaeological discharge certificate from Bucharest authorities in July. More recently the site was a Romanian state-owned open pit operation (pictured) and Gabriel Resources has set aside $35 million for what it calls "rescue archaeology" .

Strong deep basin activity drove a hike in second quarter production for Paramount Resources Ltd., which reported Wednesday that average sales volumes increased 30 per cent in the period. The Calgary-based intermediate producer’s acquisition of ProspEx Resources Ltd. on May 31, along with new wells, meant a growth of 56 per cent in its sales volumes for the Kaybob division of the company.

Mountain Province Diamonds announced on Tuesday that the Gahcho Kué environmental impact study – all 11,000 pages of it – has been cleared and the review process – expected to take another two years – can now commence. Gahcho Kué, a joint venture between Mountain Province and De Beers, is the world's largest and highest grade diamond development project. It consists of a cluster of four diamondiferous kimberlites, three of which have a probable mineral reserve of 31.3 million tonnes grading 1.57 carats per tonne for total diamond content of 49 million carats.