Behre Dolbear's ‘2010 Ranking of Countries for Mining Investment’ ranks 25 countries with major mining exploration and operations on seven criteria that focus on “political risk”. Seven criteria look at the country’s economic and political system, the degree to which social issues affect mining, delays in obtaining permits, corruption, the stability of the local currency and the tax regime. For… Read this post →
At the recent ITRI International Tin Conference, metals and mining consultancy CRU Group presented an update of its "Commodity Price Climate Change" forecast. This has nothing to do with which commodities would benefit from an anthropogenically warmed planet (we'll cover that another day), but is a way of summarising their views of whether commodity price outlooks will be “hot”, “warm”,… Read this post →
London's mining scene gathered in force at the Mining Journal's Gold Day. However, we left with concerns about the extent to which gold prices are being supported by investors, and about increasing political risk for gold miners, which is reducing some miners' leverage to the booming gold price. Investor-supported gold Just how much the current high gold price has been… Read this post →