Imminent strike at Peru’s largest copper mine supports price

Uncertainty regarding the never-ending euro crisis and weak data from China sent gold and markets lower. The S&P/TSX Composite Index is off 1.88% and the S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index is down 1.93%. Yesterday, gold broke through $1,700 mark but is now back trading at $1,680.

Canadian gold royalties company Franco-Nevada aims to raise C$340-million in an equity offering, it said on Tuesday. The TSX- and NYSE-listed firm said it would use the cash for acquisitions, working capital and general corporate purposes.

Canada's net crude oil exports will triple by 2035 due to in situ production and not hydraulic fracturing, according to a report by the National Energy Board released on Tuesday. Oilsands accounts for 55% of Canada's oil production today rising to 85% 24 years from now. "By 2035, in the Reference Case, oil sands bitumen production is projected to reach 811 thousand m³/d (5.1 million bbl/d), three times the production for 2010."

Fears over the direction of Vale, the world’s biggest miner of iron ore by volume, renewed this morning as the company’s CEO Murilo Ferreira announced late on Monday that he will submit to the Board of Directors a proposal for a new structure of the Executive Board. Investors have been particularly cautious of management changes at the miner since Brazil’s government helped push out Roger Agnelli, Vale’s former chief executive, at the end of his mandate in May. The company said that the restructuring aims to establish an operational model with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for each business unit.

They were supposed to be the vessels that will ferry iron ore from the world's largest exporter to the world's largest customer of the crucial steelmaking ingredient. Instead, Vale's new fleet of iron ore carriers could remain moored at home docks because the Chinese don't want them. Bloomberg reports that the Vale Brasil, the largest bulk carrier ever built, was designed to carry iron ore to China from Vale's mines in South America, but it has not made one voyage in six months of operation. The reason? China is refusing to accept the vessel, which is part of a fleet of 19 ships that Vale is buying from Chinese and Korean shipbuilders in deals valued at $2.3 billion.

Imperial Metals (TSE:III) is extending its Huckleberry mine in northern British Columbia by 7 years. The company said it plans to extend the Main zone pit and build a new tailings storage facility, which will keep the mine running until 2021, 7 years later than the previous plan to close the mine in 2014. The pit is estimated to contain 39.7 million tonnes of ore grading 0.343% copper, with an overall strip ration of 1.46 to 1. Since startup in 1997, the mine has produced an aggregate 870 million pounds of copper, 8 million pounds of molybdenum, and 105,000 ounces of gold and 3.4 million ounces of silver.

A report by Climate Spectator raises new questions about BHP Billiton’s $20 billion investment in the US shale gas business, saying Mike Yeager, the Houston-based boss of the world's number one miner's petroleum division, has been on quite a roadshow to explain the company's rationale but failed to adequately address the critical issue of water supply. Analysts are skeptical about the prospects of BHP's foray into shale gas – which the world’s most valuable miner could grow to $60 billion over the next decade – considering its poor track record with acquisitions, its relatively limited experience in the fracking business, environmental concerns and warnings that it is again buying at the top of the cycle.

The Globe and Mail reports ever since the euro zone bond markets first started to get the jitters, hedge fund managers have been whispering that gold could play a part in resolving the crisis. Until recently, this discussion has mainly been the preserve of conspiracy theorists and backbench German politicians. But now the use of gold to fund a euro zone bailout is coming closer to reality.

Reuters reports the board of Brazil's Vale has approved a $6 billion expansion of its Moatize coal project in Mozambique to lift output to 22 million tonnes per year from the 11 million tonnes it expects to mine initially with first production forecast for the second half of 2014. The country's Tete province is believed to hold one of the world's largest untapped coal reserves that has been compared with Australia's coal-rich Bowen Basin. Mozambique suffered a 15-year long civil war that ended in 1992 and remains one of the poorest countries in the world, but the ex-Portuguese colony 7% economic growth this year is forecast to accelerate thanks to billions in mining and infrastructure spending. The Mozambique metical is also the world's best-performing currency.