Newmont Mining Corp., the world’s second-largest gold miner, plans to divest a further 7 percent stake in its Batu Hijau copper-gold mine in Indonesia and offered the shares to the government for about $325 million.
“We’ve made the offer, based on a value of $4.65 billion for the mine,” Newmont spokesman Rubi Purnomo said in Jakarta [...]

Thousands of workers from a giant US-run mine in Indonesia’s remote Papua province staged a noisy but peaceful protest Wednesday amid tight security to demand better wages and welfare.
Police, including from the paramilitary Brimob unit, stood guard as thousands of workers from the Grasberg gold and copper mine demonstrated outside the Indonesian headquarters of Freeport-McMoRan [...]

Mindoro Resources Ltd. is pleased to provide an update from the Agata nickel laterite project, where five coring drill rigs are in operation. Both limonite and saprolite horizons of the laterite are substantially thicker than anticipated, not only increasing tonnage potential, but also expanding market potential for the higher-value nickel material in the saprolite [...]

“In terms of its economic and geopolitical impact, what is happening in Asia today is probably most akin to the Industrial Revolution, when the world’s leading economies replaced manual labor with mass-scale manufacture of machinery, railways began to criss-cross the continents, the steam engine revolutionized the world, and later, skyscrapers first poked at the skies. [...]

Workers at Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s Grasberg mine in Indonesia rallied to demand higher pay in a protest that may to curb output at the world’s second-largest copper mine. The price of the metal gained.
Protesters are moving to Timika, the regency’s capital, said Frans Pigome, the head of Tongoi Papua, which represents native Papuans. [...]

Copper rose in London, trading above $8,000 a metric ton for a second day, on speculation a protest by workers at the world’s second-largest mine will disrupt supplies.
About 5,000 employees at Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc.’s Grasberg operations in Indonesia held a rally at a nearby town to demand pay increases. Representatives from Tongoi Papua, [...]

Jiangxi Copper Co., China’s second- biggest producer of the metal, may say full-year profit more than doubled to a record as demand from power and construction industries boosted prices.
Net income may be 4.76 billion yuan ($616 million) in the 12 months to Dec. 31, from 1.87 billion yuan a year ago, based on the median [...]

China holds large reserves of metal deposits but the quality of most of the deposits is low, state media reported on Wednesday, citing preliminary survey results from the country’s geological institutes and resource agencies.
China plans to complete an assessment of the country’s mineral resources and set up a mining plan for some provinces in 2007, [...]

The proven iron ore reserves in China are 59.39 billion tons, according to the Ministry of Land and Resources.
The iron content of the reserves is 30 to 35 percent on average and 41.5 billion tons among the total reserves is magnetite, the ministry said in a statement posted on its Web site.
It noted that China [...]

Xstrata plc, the fourth-largest copper and nickel producer in the world, has agreed to sell aluminium plants and a bauxite mine to New York-based Apollo Management LP for US$1.15 billion as it focuses on more profitable commodities.
The operations in the US and Jamaica were acquired by Switzerland-based Xstrata in 2006 when it bought Canada`s Falconbridge [...]