Last week saw Oxfam America, the U.S. arm of the well known international NGO to “promote the rights of communities impacted by oil, gas, and mining industries. According to Oxfam America, “too often, oil, gas, and mining projects don’t benefit people in countries that are rich in natural resources.” However, the idea that resource-rich countries do not benefit from projects to extract those resources is false.

Millions of people in the Persian Gulf region are living a lifestyle that they could never have attained had they not been born in resource-rich countries, which certainly take their share of oil & gas revenues.

While this may be an extreme example because of the relatively sparse population of the Persian Gulf states and the extraordinary bounty of oil & gas these states are sitting on, there are others.

Take Botswana, perhaps the most stable, least corrupt country in Africa, with the possible exception of South Africa. Why is the case? It is solely because of mining, conducted largely by international companies. Read more

London Metal Exchange copper for delivery in three months added as much as 0.9 percent to $8,650 ton, and stood at $8,570 at 4:32 p.m. Singapore time. The contract rose to a record $8,880 a ton on April 17 as workers at Codelco, the world’s largest producer, went on strike.

July-delivery copper on the Shanghai Futures Exchange climbed as much as 790 yuan, or 1.2 percent, to 64,990 yuan ($9,286) a ton, before closing at 64,140 yuan.

Aluminum traded 0.5 percent lower at $3,061 a ton, even as traders and analysts including Barclays Capital’s Gayle Berry expect the metal to outperform other industrial metals next year. Read more

Mineral exploration expenditure has been in steady decline. In an attempt to revitalise the mineral sector, the Papua New Guinea government reduced the income and dividend withholding tax levels for mining companies.

Investment incentives are available to legitimate investors. This includes duty-free entry of plant and equipment (if not manufactured or available in Papua New Guinea). In general, the cost of doing business in Papua New Guinea is high and the investment environment is considered risky. This risk is associated with government policy changes, law and order issues, poor infrastructure and inefficient bureaucracy.

Australian banks, law firms and accountants are a ready source of investment advice and should be approached before any investment decision is taken.
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Anaconda Copper Mining Company one of the largest trusts of the early 20th century which owned all the mines on Butte Hill, Montana, USA. The Anaconda Company was purchased by Atlantic Richfield Company (ARCO) on January 12, 1977. At present (2007), Anaconda exists only as an environmental liability for BP, the current owner of ARCO.

The area of Butte, Montana, Anaconda, Montana, and the Clark Fork River were highly contaminated. Milling and smelting produced wastes with high concentrations of arsenic, as well as copper, cadmium, lead, zinc, and other heavy metals. That’s why, beginning in 1980s, the Environmental Protection Agency designated the Upper Clark Fork river basin and many Read more

SYDNEY (Thomson Financial) – One of the South Pacific’s largest copper and gold mines, which was at the center of a decade-long secessionist war, could be reopened, the Papua New Guinea government said on Tuesday.

The huge Panguna mine on PNG’s most eastern island, Bougainville, was forced to close in 1989 after continuous attacks by secessionist rebels in a war that cost an estimated 10,000 lives.

As part of a peace agreement, Bougainville was granted autonomy by the PNG government in June 2005, but the island has struggled financially and been plagued by poverty and law and order problems.

For the past 18 months, Bougainville’s autonomous government has been seeking to gain control of the island’s mining powers and functions from the PNG government.
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Continental Airlines and Southwest Airlines, two of the healthiest major U.S. carriers, said Thursday that record-high fuel costs had led to disappointing quarterly earnings, and they lowered their growth plans.

Continental’s loss and Southwest’s decline in profit highlight the biggest challenges facing the airline industry – skyrocketing fuel prices and a sagging U.S. economy.

These were also contributors to the quarterly loss reported Wednesday by AMR, the parent of American Airlines.

Tough market conditions could also put pressure on Continental to take part in a merger to better compete with Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, which said this week that they planned to combine to form the world’s largest airline by traffic volume.
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Larry Elliott and Terry Macalister
The Guardian

Oil prices could hit $125 a barrel over the coming weeks amid fears of supply shortages and a continued fall in the value of the dollar, one leading investor said last night. The soaring price of crude, which reached another new record of $115 yesterday, has triggered a buyout scramble in the sector with oil services specialist, Expro International, announcing a £1.6bn takeover by Candover and other private equity groups.

T Boone Pickens, a veteran oilman who now heads the BP Capital hedge fund, said the cost of crude was moving to a substantially higher level after it touched $115.54 at one point in London trading.

Profit-taking later saw oil prices fall by a dollar to $114.53, but Pickens said the trend was for crude to go higher. “It will go up,” he said.
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