HudBay gets out of Guatemala – but won't escape

Canada’s HudBay Minerals is about to sell all its interests in Guatemala’s Fenix project. Almost certainly one of the prompts for its withdrawal is the murder of a man, and the alleged gang-rapes of eleven women at the project in 2007. However, according...

Tanzania in talks with miners to raise gold export taxes

Tanzania’s government is in talks with mining companies to raise royalty payments on gold exports as well as negotiating other possible tax hikes. African Barrick Gold has four gold mines in Tanzania while Australia’s third largest gold miner, Resolute...

Strike pressures PT Freeport Indonesia into serious negotiations

Indigenous Papuans are waging a four-decade long nonviolent struggle for independence from Indonesia. At the heart of Papuan grievances lies Freeport, the world’s largest gold and copper mine, owned and operated by US based company Freeport McMoRan and their...

Seabed Mining: plunging into the depths of a new frontier

Humankind has explored deeper into the depths of space than it has into the murky depths of the ocean. People actually have more knowledge of what lies at the end of the universe than at the bottom of the sea. Among the companies planning seabed mining are...

Outrage at Ivanhoe-Rio Tinto's dirty Burma deal

New information confirms that a little-publicised mining deal between Rio Tinto and Canada-based Ivanhoe Mines has, almost literally, sold the people of Burma down the river. See http://www.minesandcommunities.org/article.php?a=11098 Ivanhoe chief says Oyu Tolgoi...

Rio Tinto's tall tailings

Rio Tinto subsidiary Kennecott plays coy with the US Environmental Protection Agency, Utah’s Department of Air Quality and Salt Lake City officials as it lays a plan to mine the mineral-rich dustpiles of yesteryear. See...

South African mineworkers wage war on economic injustices

Although several, pay-related,  gold mine strikes have just ended in South Africa, this doesn’t by any means mark an end to  struggles for elementary economic justice on the part of large numbers of workers. In a statement of 28 July 2011, the National Union of...