BHP axing up to 300 Olympic Dam jobs

Unionists from around the world will gather in the Canadian city of Alma, Quebec, from March 30 to April 1, to express their support for locked-out Rio Tinto Alcan workers who are fighting to preserve decent jobs, said international unions representatives on Wednesday.

Peru’s long-running Conga mine dispute moved slightly forward on Tuesday after the government appointed foreign engineers to oversee an independent review of Newmont Mining Corp.'s stalled $4.8 billion gold project, reports La Republica.

A week after announcing substantial profits and the expansion of their vast Western Australia iron ore operations, BHP Billiton (NYSE: BHP) and Rio Tinto (NYSE:RIO) said yesterday that they would spend $US 4.5 billion on the Escondida copper mine in Chile.

Sydney Morning Herald reports that between 3500 and 4000 miners have walked off the job at BHP Billiton's coal operations in Queensland.

Republicans in the US Congress are once again attempting to force through the approval of the Keystone XL project, while the pipeline's backers TransCanada says it could receive approval early in 2013.

The Australian mining industry's determination to reach its goal of zero harm is reflected in the latest safety performance statistics released by the Queensland Government and reported by the Queensland Resources Council. Lost time injury frequency rates for the State of Queensland fell again from 3.8 to 2.9 injuries per million hours worked in 2010-2011. Days lost to injuries were down from 14,325 days to 11,027 days while the lost time injury plus disabling injury duration rate fell from 34.4 days to 27.4 days per injury.

Xstrata Plc is looking to offload a portion of its $6.4 billion Wandoan coal project in Australia, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Brazillian miner Vale SA said Tuesday it is gradually resuming mining at its underground nickel operations in Sudbury, Canada.

Detour Gold Corporation (TSX:DGC) ("Detour Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has completed its previously announced bought deal public offering of common shares. In addition to the 8,600,000 common shares the underwriters initially agreed to purchase, the underwriters, led by BMO Capital Markets and CIBC, purchased all of the 1,290,000 common shares available for issuance pursuant to the exercise of their over-allotment option.