PTC India Plans Joint Ventures for Coal Mining Assets

PTC India Ltd., the country's largest power trader, plans to form joint ventures to purchase shares of mining projects overseas to help secure fuel supplies for Indian power producers are facing shortage of coal, its chairman said Monday.

New-Delhi based PTC plans to buy coal assets overseas and Indian companies in Indonesia and Australia and may sell the imported coal in India is the spot market or through long term contracts with independent power producers, Tantra Narayan Thakur told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview.

"We would prefer a joint venture for large projects like we do not have such funds, and second, logistics, will be difficult for us to manage large projects alone," Mr. Thakur said.

India, which imports 59 million tons of coal in the fiscal year ending March 2009 is expected to import as many as 150 million tonnes in March 2017 as a local output has not been able to keep pace with the addition of a country's capacity for generating electricity.

India is already facing peak power shortages and the request is considered to lag supply for years to come as the world's second fastest growing economy continues to grow more than 7% per year.

Local power producers and coal miners have been scouting for assets in Indonesia, Australia, Mozambique and the United States is committed to ensuring supply and to guard against price fluctuations.

PTC, which raised 17 billion rupees ($ 368 million) over two calendar years, until the end of 2009 by issuing 144.09 million shares to institutional investors, has set aside 3 billion rupees for coal assets.

"In addition to 3 billion rupees, we will look forward to joint venture partners to provide (the capital) and the company may also seek funding from the private sector," said Mr. Thakur said.

PTC is in the process of preparing a UK fund Ashmore Group to acquire assets related to energy. Some of these results can also be used to buy coal assets, Mr. Thakur said.

PTC and Ashmore was in the final stages of discussions for the funds and can be signed a joint venture by March 31.

"We have not decided on the size of funds," he said, adding that a joint venture agreement has been signed, the company will come to the amount of after market testing.

TCM can also get funding from private equity investors to buy coal mines, Mr. Thakur said.
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Thursday, April 22, 2010

World's top 100 Mining Companies: Coal, iron ore & platinum rule the roost

Demand for mining stocks is strong, and broad, but still relatively selective.
Most stock and commodity indices are at or around 12-month highs; well known exceptions include Greece, Spain and Portugal. China is perhaps a lesser known exception of sorts; there stocks have been tripping along for months with equity investors remaining nervous over changes in domestic policy, and ongoing relative weakness in export markets.


From MineWeb:

The overall equation is increasingly ameliorated by China's growing internal consumer markets, which continue to grow as a "shock absorber", at least cushioning export demand softness. At the same time, demand in China's real economy remains firm, and continues to drive global demand for most commodities. At this fundamental level, China's economy remains robust, easily retaining its status as epicentre of the world economy.

SELECTED INDICES AND SPOTS








From


From



Points


high*


low*

MSCI world equities USD


1213.33


-0.6%


47.2%

MSCI emerging markets USD


1042.99


-0.3%


73.9%

Dow Jones Industrial


10897.52


-0.8%


40.6%

S+P 500


1182.45


-0.8%


45.1%

DJ Stoxx 600


265.87


-1.4%


47.4%

CSI 300


3346.74


-12.0%


36.2%

Shanghai Composite


3118.71


-10.3%


33.7%

Micex Russia


1472.53


-2.2%


79.3%

India Nifty


5304.45


-1.8%


68.4%

Reuters/Jefferies CRB


277.59


-5.5%


29.0%

Dow Jones AIG Commodity


135.09


-6.9%


26.5%

Baltic Dry Shipping


2947.00


-36.8%


101.4%

Baltic Capesize Shipping


3233.00


-60.8%


62.2%

Dollar Index Spot


81.70


-6.0%


10.1%

KBW banks


54.53


-1.7%


98.4%

Gold spot USD/oz


1146.60


-6.5%


32.6%

* 12-month






Among commodity markets, coal and iron ore continue to stand out as exceptional global subsectors. China has long been, and remains, the world's biggest miner of coal and iron ore, but for years has also ranked as a net importer of iron ore, and as of last year, of coal as well. Coking coal, a vital constituent in iron ore reduction, has done particularly well.

BHP Billiton, the world's biggest diversified resources group, and No 1 producer of seaborne coking coal, last month announced that it had settled contracts "with a range of customers throughout Europe, China, India and Japan", without confirming numbers, but probably around USD 200.00/tonne, 55% higher than prevailing contract rates applicable to 31 March 2010.

Coking coal prices rocketed to USD 300.00/tonne for the 2008-2009 season, and were then slashed to USD 129.00/tonne, the contract price applying to the end of last month. In the iron ore arena, seaborne prices have moved up, on a contract basis, to around USD 140.00/tonne, roughly 100% higher that the previous annual contract, and much in line with spot prices. Iron ore contracts have now been shortened from the long-established 12-month term.

Many other commodity and metal prices are running hard, with a good number up around 12-month highs, and some even at multi-year highs. Platinum has been a particular interest of late, underpinning very strong performances among platinum stocks, especially those ranked as well-established producers....MUCH MORE, including price action on the top 100.
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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

2010 China International Forum on Coal Development and Expo of Coal Mining Equipment to be held from 26-29 October 2010 at National Agriculture Exhibi

From: Agriculture Week | Date: April 01, 2010 | 700+ words

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Description: 2010 China International Forum on Coal Development and Expo of Coal Mining Equipment to be held from 26-29 October 2010 at National Agriculture Exhibi Rating: 5 Reviewer: Admin ItemReviewed: 2010 China International Forum on Coal Development and Expo of Coal Mining Equipment to be held from 26-29 October 2010 at National Agriculture Exhibi

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Sunday, April 18, 2010

Deaths at West Virginia Mine Raise Issues About Safety

MONTCOAL, W.Va. — Rescue workers began the precarious task Tuesday of removing explosive methane gas from the coal mine where 25 miners died the day before. The mine owner’s dismal safety record, along with several recent evacuations of the mine, left federal officials and miners suggesting Monday’s explosion might have been preventable.

In the past two months, miners had been evacuated three times from the Upper Big Branch due to dangerously high methane levels, according to two miners who asked for anonymity for fear of losing their jobs. Nick J. Rahall II, a Democratic congressman whose district includes the mine, said he had received similar reports from miners about recent evacuations at the mine, which as recently as last month was fined at least three times for ventilation problems, according to federal records.

The Massey Energy Company, the biggest coal mining business in central Appalachia and the owner of the Upper Big Branch mine, has drawn sharp scrutiny and fines from regulators over its safety and environmental record. Several of its violations have been for improperly ventilating methane.

In 2008, one of its subsidiaries paid what federal prosecutors called the largest settlement in the history of the coal industry after pleading guilty to safety violations that contributed to the deaths of two miners in a fire in one of its mines. That year, Massey also paid a $20 million fine — the largest of its kind levied by the Environmental Protection Agency — for clean water violations.

It is still unclear what caused Monday’s blast, which is under investigation. But the disaster has raised new questions about Massey’s attention to safety under the leadership of its pugnacious chief executive, Don L. Blankenship, and also why stricter federal laws, put into effect after a mining disaster in 2006, failed to prevent another tragedy.

Kevin Stricklin, an administrator with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the magnitude of the explosion — the worst mining accident in 25 years, which also left four people missing — showed that “something went very wrong here.”

“All explosions are preventable,” Mr. Stricklin said. “It’s just making sure you have things in place to keep one from occurring.”

Representative Rahall said even veteran rescue workers had told him they were shocked by what they saw inside the mine.

Mr. Rahall said the rescue workers, some with decades of experience, had commented that they had never witnessed destruction on that scale, or dealt with the aftermath of an explosion of that magnitude.

“It turned rail lines into pretzels,” he said. “There seems like there was something awfully wrong to make such a huge explosion.”

Gov. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and members of Congress said the state and the federal government would begin investigating the explosion’s cause.

In an interview with the Metronews radio network in West Virginia, Mr. Blankenship said that despite the company’s many violations, the Mine Safety and Health Administration would never have allowed the mine to operate if it had been unsafe.

“Violations are unfortunately a normal part of the mining process. There are violations at every coal mine in America, and U.B.B. was a mine that had violations,” he said, referring to Upper Big Branch.

“I think the fact that M.S.H.A., the state and our fire bosses and the best engineers that you can find were all in and around this mine, and all believed it to be safe in the circumstances it was in, speaks for itself as far as any suspicion that the mine was improperly operated.”

The front page of Massey’s Web site also contains a defense of its safety record, with a passage saying that 2009 was the seventeenth year out of 20 that the company has scored above the industry average in safety.

But miners and other workers in the mine took issue with Mr. Blankenship’s reassurances.

“No one will say this who works at that mine, but everyone knows that it has been dangerous for years,” said Andrew Tyler, 22, an electrician who worked as a subcontractor two years ago at the mine on the wiring for the coal conveyer belt. Mr. Tyler said workers had regularly been told to work 12-hour shifts when eight hours is the industry standard. He also said live wires had been left exposed and an accumulation of coal dust and methane was routinely ignored.

“I’m willing to go on record because I am a subcontractor who doesn’t depend on Massey for my life,” Mr. Tyler said.

J. Davitt McAteer, the former Mine Safety and Health Administration, said the Massey company “is certainly one of the worst in the industry” when it came to safety, and called recent violations at the mine for substandard ventilation and other problems “cardinal sins.”

“The Massey record is without doubt one of the most difficult in the industry from a safety standpoint,” Mr. McAteer, now the vice president of Wheeling Jesuit University, said in an interview. He said other large, diversified coal operators had far better safety records than Massey.

In 2008, the Aracoma Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey, agreed to pay $4.2 million in criminal fines and civil penalties and to plead guilty to several safety violations related to a 2006 fire that killed two miners at a coal mine in Logan, W.Va. After the fire broke out, the two miners found themselves unable to escape, partly because the company had removed some ventilation controls inside the mine. The workers died of suffocation. Federal prosecutors at the time called it the largest such settlement in the history of the coal industry.

The company’s commitment to safety came under scrutiny in 2005 after Mr. Blankenship sent a memorandum to his deep mine superintendents.

“If any of you have been asked by your group presidents, your supervisors, engineers or anyone else to do anything other than run coal (i.e., build overcasts, do construction jobs, or whatever), you need to ignore them and run coal,” said the memo, a copy of which was obtained from Bruce E. Stanley, a lawyer who represented the widows of the victims of the Aracoma mine fire. “This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that coal pays the bills.”

In a follow-up memo a week later, Mr. Blankenship said that some superintendents might have interpreted his first memo as implying that safety was a secondary consideration; in the second memo he called safety the company’s “first responsibility.”

In Washington on Tuesday during an Easter prayer breakfast, President Obama offered his condolences to the families of the victims and said the federal government was ready to help in whatever way needed.

Thirty-one miners were in the mine on Monday when the explosion occurred around 3 p.m. . Some died from the explosion. Others suffocated from the fumes, state safety officials said. Seven of the bodies have been removed, and 14 have not yet been identified,

Four of the miners who were believed to have been further back in the mine remained unaccounted for late Tuesday. Officials said there was still a possibility, though slim, that the men had able to reach airtight chambers after the explosion, where there are stockpiles of food, water and oxygen.

Governor Manchin said at an afternoon news conference that four drills were in place to begin drilling holes behind the rescue chambers, an effort that began in earnest later in the day. It may not be until Wednesday night that rescue workers can regain entry to the mine after the first ventilation hole is drilled, he said.

“Everyone is going to cling on to the hope of that miracle,” the governor said of the four missing miners. “The odds are against us. These are long odds. They know. These are mining families. They know methane, they know about air.”

As the families of the miners waited Tuesday, frustrations grew. State and mine officials were taking a long time to confirm the names of the dead, many of the miners said. Families also voiced frustration that they had learned about the disaster from news reports rather than from Massey officials.

Some of these tensions boiled over Tuesday morning around 2 a.m. when Mr. Blankenship arrived at the mine to announce the death toll to families who were gathered at the site. Escorted by at least a dozen state and other police officers, according to several witnesses, Mr. Blankenship prepared to address the crowd but people yelled at him for caring more about profit than miners’ lives.

After another Massey official informed the crowd of the new death toll, one miner threw a chair, a father and son stormed off screaming that they were quitting mining work, and several people yelled at Mr. Blankenship that he was to blame, before he was escorted away from the scene.

Description: Deaths at West Virginia Mine Raise Issues About Safety Rating: 5 Reviewer: Admin ItemReviewed: Deaths at West Virginia Mine Raise Issues About Safety

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Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Mechel Announces Coking Coal Concentrate Trading Start at St. Petersburg International Raw Material and Commodity Exchange

MOSCOW, April 5, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mechel OAO , one of the leading Russian mining and metals companies, announces coking coal concentrate trading start at St. Petersburg international raw material and commodity exchange.

On the 2nd of April, 2010 St. Petersburg international raw material and commodity exchange ZAO held the 1st Russian coking coal concentrate auction. The auction was held on the terms of commodity exchange specification of «Energy Resources» section. The commodity was brought forward under delivery basis of FCA Tomusinsk and Mezhdurechensk station of Kemerovsky region, Russian Federation. Mechel Trading House OOO, Mechel OAO's subsidiary, was one of the participants of the trading. Steel mills and coking plants are expected to become the main coking coal concentrate consumers.

Mechel OAO highly appreciates the importance of the exchange auctions start for coking coal concentrate. Better availability of pricing information is an effective tool for state antitrust control. Implementation of the commodity exchange mechanism for raw materials competitive pricing is a one more step in developing market economy in Russia.

Mechel is one of the leading Russian companies. Its business includes four segments: mining, steel, ferroalloy and power. Mechel unites producers of coal, iron ore concentrate, nickel, steel, ferrochrome, ferrosilicon, rolled products, hardware, heat and electric power. Mechel products are marketed domestically and internationally.

Some of the information in this press release may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future financial performance of Mechel, as defined in the safe harbor provisions of the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. We wish to caution you that these statements are only predictions and that actual events or results may differ materially. We do not intend to update these statements. We refer you to the documents Mechel files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Form 20-F. These documents contain and identify important factors, including those contained in the section captioned "Risk Factors" and "Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements" in our Form 20-F, that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those contained in our projections or forward-looking statements, including, among others, the achievement of anticipated levels of profitability, growth, cost and synergy of our recent acquisitions, the impact of competitive pricing, the ability to obtain necessary regulatory approvals and licenses, the impact of developments in the Russian economic, political and legal environment, volatility in stock markets or in the price of our shares or ADRs, financial risk management and the impact of general business and global economic conditions.

CONTACT: Mechel OAO
Ekaterina Videman
+ 7 495 221-88-88
ekaterina.videman@mechel.com

Description: Mechel Announces Coking Coal Concentrate Trading Start at St. Petersburg International Raw Material and Commodity Exchange Rating: 5 Reviewer: Admin ItemReviewed: Mechel Announces Coking Coal Concentrate Trading Start at St. Petersburg International Raw Material and Commodity Exchange

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