Chinese rare earth metals exchange to pay $6.4bn owed to investors

BHP's four largest projects – Olympic Dam, the Outer Harbour iron ore infrastructure project in Australia, expansion of its US shale gas operations and Jansen potash in Saskatchewan, Canada – require $120 billion in capex costs, but will only start to contribute to the bottom line by 2023.

A small number of investment professionals around the world are competing behind the scenes to turn the gem into a commodity that would be available to investors in the way that gold has been traded through funds on exchanges.

In a scathing new BBC documentary that includes the first ever television interview with CEO Ivan Glasenberg, commodities trader Glencore is accused of allowing dumping of acid into streams, child labour and deadly underground working conditions at its copper-cobalt mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The very survival of Britain?s coal mining industry depends on the success of a massive restructuring of UK Coal, which is to be announced in the next fortnight.

For metals consultancy Thomson Reuters GFMS’s Paul Walker, looking to hedge from a position of strength would serve miners well when prices do eventually fall.

Hollinger pit project moving forward yet many Timmins people seem unaware.

Gold futures trading on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange experienced an after-hours selloff on Friday with prices tumbling $20 in a flurry of end-of week liquidation.

Ivanhoe and Rio Tinto not only have to deal with higher projected mining and processing costs at the mega-mine but also development delays and most worryingly, lower ore grades.

Avalon Rare Metals, whose Nechalacho rare earth prospect in Canada's Northwest Territories is in the midst of a feasibility study, today announced the results of a separate prefeasibility study for the separation plant, to be built in Louisiana.