The Australian reported that BHP Billiton is in talks to take up a 25% stake in a A$615million (US$733million) bauxite mine and alumina refinery in India`s eastern Orissa province. The deal would be BHP Billiton`s first project in India.
It also reported that Zinifex Ltd and its Belgian partner Umicore Group are believed to have appointed [...]

WASHINGTON - More than a year after the Sago mine explosion that killed 12 miners, protections for miners who get trapped underground have not yet been implemented, the United Mine Workers president said Wednesday.
UMW President Cecil Roberts testified during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing in which senators questioned Richard Stickler, head of the nation’s mine [...]

China’s Chambishi copper smelter in Zambia has agreed to process 230,000 tonnes of copper concentrate per year from Lumwana Copper Mines under a new five-year deal, Lumwana’s owners said on Friday.
Equinox Minerals Ltd. , which owns the Lumwana copper mine in Zambia, said in a statement that the agreement was a ‘take and pay’ contract [...]

Construction of two new ethanol plants in Iowa will offer area farmers stronger local demand for their corn.
Bill Todorof, chairman of Cedar River Ethanol LLC, and Unity Ethanol LLC, made double announcements Wednesday, Dec. 27 of his companies’ plan to construct two ethanol plants - one in Ottumwa and the second near Ainsworth/Columbus Junction, IA.
Technology [...]

Billy Vandom was 220 feet underground, but to him, it was the top of the world. He is a coal miner, a species of well-paid American worker that was on the verge of extinction in these parts for more than a decade.
Now global economic forces have realigned, and coal mining is back. And a new [...]

Lusaka - Zambia is planning to invite foreign firms to conduct exploratory drills for oil and gas after the first-ever reserves were found near the border with Angola, the government said on Monday.
Samples taken at a dozen sites in the north-western provinces of Zambezi and Chavuma over the weekend confirmed gas and oil residues in [...]

Miners from the now-closed Liberty Mine heard an optimistic report Friday morning by United Mine Workers officials about the future of coal mining in Southern Illinois.
But for many of the 141 miners, the future is not soon enough.
The union miners were handed pink slips on July 13 when Liberty officials idled the mine that is [...]