Yanzhou Coal injects $2.8bn into troubled Australian unit

Reuters reports schools and businesses were closed and Peruvian police fired tear gas on Friday to break up a protest at Newmont Mining and Buenaventura's proposed $4.8 billion Conga gold mine as the government tried to mediate a bitter environmental dispute over the project. Residents in the northern city of Cajamarca which has more than 200,000 residents (pictured), led by the president of the region,  say a new mine – adjacent to South America’s largest gold mine Yanacocha – will harm agriculture and livestock by relocating water supplies.  Conga would be the biggest investment ever in Peru mining.

Shares in some of the world's biggest copper producers are getting trounced as the price of the bellwether metal continues to flounder around the $3.27 per pound mark. Taking a 3-month time frame, Lundin Mining (TSE:LUN) has shed 37% of its share price, BHP Billiton (NYSE:BHP) is down 22%, Anglo American (LON:AAL) has sunk 15%, and Freeport McMorran (NYSE:FCX) has crashed 28%. Three-month contracts for the red metal fell to a one-month low Wednesday to $7,168 a tonne in intra-day trade in London and extended its losses in New York where it was trading at $3.27 a pound, its lowest level since October 25 and down 30% from its 2011 high of $4.61 set in February.

Nautilus, the first company to explore the ocean floor for polymetallic seafloor massive sulphide deposits, announced on Friday a drilling campaign conducted at its tenements in the Bismarck Sea of Papua New Guinea has enabled the company to increase the resource estimate at its Solwara 1 project, and to declare a maiden Inferred Resource at the nearby Solwara 12 deposit. Earlier this month Toronto-listed company completed the quarter with a cash balance of $155.1 million, after successfully raising $70.5 million in the first tranche of a $98.1 million capital raising. The final tranche of C$27.6 million was received in October. The capital raising involved the issue of approximately 39 million shares at C$2.52 per share. The counter was trading down 2.9% on Friday at $2.29 giving it market worth of $448 million.

Investors are wondering why Russian steel-maker Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works is buying Flinders Mines (ASX:FMS) for A$554 million. Flinder's main asset is the Pilbara iron ore project, a 917.3Mt JORC-compliant resource located in Western Australia. MMK is Russia's third largest steel company. Last year it had revenue of $7.7 billion and net income of $254 million.

The Oppenheimers, the dynasty involved in South Africa's diamond industry for a century, sold their 40 percent stake in De Beers to Anglo American.

Stock index futures fell on Friday with equities eyeing a seventh straight session of losses, their longest losing streak in four months, as investor fret about global growth and the euro zone's debt crisis.

A BBC poll enquiring about the public's appetite for nuclear power has delivered some surprising results. The poll by GlobeScan, commissioned for the BBC, asked 23,231 people in 23 countries with nuclear programs their opinions on nuclear power. It found that most are significantly more opposed to nuclear power than they were in 2005, with just 22% agreeing that "nuclear power is relatively safe and an important source of electricity, and we should build more nuclear power plants."

Mmegi Online is reporting a major downsize has taken place at Debswana, a partnership between the Botswana government and De Beers.

Energy Efficiency News reports internet giant Google has quietly announced that it is to retire its ‘Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal’ or RE<C initiative, which it launched in 2007 saying "other institutions seem better positioned than Google to take this work to the next level." Google spearheaded various projects and made investments in companies working on potentially ‘breakthrough’ technologies, including $168 million for a solar tower project in California and geothermal mapping. As part of its broader renewable energy programme Google has made several investments totaling more than $850 million in the US and Germany.