A Northern Territory mining company hopes to have a rare earth mine up and running within five years.
The rare element is a key ingredient for new technology including computer screens, rechargeable batteries and environmentally-friendly hybrid vehicles.

Phelps Dodge Corp. is buying Canadian mining companies Inco Ltd. and Falconbridge Ltd. for about $40 billion in a bet that global demand will continue to be strong enough to support surging metals prices.
The deal could resolve what had been a four-way bidding war and would create a dominant copper and nickel producer in the [...]

What started last fall as a straightforward merger between Sudbury’s two long-time nickel producers threatens to become a sell-off to U.S. interests of a huge chunk of Canada’s mining industry — one of our few industries in which Canadians still call most of the shots.
The proposed $40 billion (U.S.) mega-merger announced yesterday among the Canadian [...]

China’s top economic agency on Saturday ordered a clampdown on new coal mines to stem a looming production glut it said threatened the long-term viability of the industry.
The National Develpment and Reform Commission said China’s coal sector was threatened by excessive investment and ballooning over-capacity.
“Problems accumulated over a long time with structural irrationalities, low-level technology, [...]

South African engineering firm Bateman Engineered Technologies and Chinese heavy-machinery manufacturer Citic Heavy Engineering have entered into a formal agreement to market Citic’s range of mills and tube mills in Southern Africa.
The deal, facilitated by The Beijing Axis (TBA) and unveiled on Monday, will see Bateman Engineered Technologies, a division of Bateman Engineering NV, acquiring [...]

China North East Petroleum Holdings, Limited, is pleased to announce the award of a major drilling contract to Rising Sun Oil Exploration and Production Limited. Rising Sun is a leading oilfield services provider in Jilin Province, the Peoples’ Republic of China, or PRC, for the company’s 2006 drilling program in the Qian112 oil field.

After more than a decade prospecting across China, world number-two mining company Rio Tinto Ltd./Plc said it still has not found the mother lode and was starting to look elsewhere.
“Rio Tinto has been undertaking mineral exploration in China for more than 11 years,” the company’s exploration director for Asia Tim Moody said.
“Although we have a [...]

Phelps Dodge Corp. said Monday it is buying Canadian mining companies Inco Ltd. and Falconbridge Ltd. in a cash and stock deal worth about $40 billion that will create one of the world’s largest mining companies.
The new company, to be called Phelps Dodge Inco, would have operations in more than 40 countries and employ about [...]

When Wei Yong returned to his ancestral village last year to visit his 77-year-old mother, he heard about the tremors. Late one night, the residents told him, the village was rocked by what everyone thought was an earthquake. The ground shook. The houses trembled. And the earth cracked open.
“Liu Run told me her walls were [...]

South African oil and gas company Sasol Ltd. said Thursday it signed a cooperation agreement with a consortium led by China’s Shenhua Corp. for second-stage studies on the viability of an 80,000 barrels per day potential coal-to-liquids project west of Beijing.
A similar agreement for another project in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous region, about 1,000 kilometres [...]