Mincor Resources announced that the Company has delineated a significant potential extension to its Otter Juan nickel mine at Kambalda using an innovative underground drilling technique that has returned an intersection of 8.29m @ 3.70% Ni (true width 3.5m) more than 100m beyond the furthest previous drill intersection in the ore body. The Company reported [...]

Indonesia’s PT Aneka Tambang (Antam) said on Thursday it expects to meet its 2008 nickel output target despite shutting one of its smelters for repairs.
First-quarter nickel output of 4,362 tonnes was little changed against the same period a year ago, it said.
The company said it had so far reached 26 percent of its production target [...]

Paris-based International Energy Agency has put coal in the future energy mix.
Due to strong demand, record oil and gas prices, concerns over energy security and a reluctance to fully bring back nuclear energy, coal has seen a resurgence in the European energy market.
It’s a trend that has been seen in the United States and Asia [...]

The president and chief executive of coal producer Patriot Coal Corp. bought 10,000 shares of common stock, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing Thursday.
In a Form 4 filed with the SEC, Richard M. Whiting reported he bought the shares Thursday for 65.88 to $66.53 apiece. He reported purchasing the shares indirectly through a [...]

The Federal Trade Commission plans to come up with rules by the end of the year to enforce a new law against price manipulation and deception in oil-trading markets.
The FTC announced that has taken the first step, seeking public comments, toward developing a regulation on oil industry price manipulation.
As part of a broad energy bill [...]

Shares of ethanol maker Aventine Renewable Energy Inc. soared over 23 percent after its first-quarter revenue and adjusted net income easily beat analyst estimates.
The stock rose $1, or 23.3 percent, to $5.30 in afternoon trading.
The company swung to a first-quarter loss of $10.8 million, or 26 cents per share, compared with a gain of $14.9 [...]

The number of rigs actively exploring for oil and natural gas in the U.S. this week fell by three from the week before.
Of the 1,839 rigs running nationwide, 1,473 are exploring for natural gas and 357 for oil, according to Baker Hughes Inc., which tracks rig operations worldwide. Nine rigs were listed as miscellaneous.
A year [...]

Marathon Oil Corp. shares extended big gains sparked by better-than-expected earnings.
Shares rose $3.08, or 6.4 percent, to $50.99 in afternoon trading.
Lehman Brothers analyst Paul Cheng raised his target price on the stock, which he rates “Overweight.” Other analysts also cheered the Houston company’s results.
On Thursday, Marathon shares jumped more than 5 percent after the company [...]

Chevron Corp. reported the most profitable first quarter in its history, earning $5.17 billion, or $2.48 per share, in the first three months of the year, up 10 percent from $4.72 billion, or $2.18 per share, a year earlier.
The performance beat the average earnings estimate of $2.41 per share among analysts polled by Thomson Financial.
But [...]

For the first time in 18 days, retail gasoline prices fell — if only slightly. Some analysts think pump prices may be near or at a peak for the year. Oil futures, meanwhile, soared after Turkish airstrikes on Kurdish rebel bases in Iraq injected some supply concerns into the market and the Labor Department’s employment [...]