mineral exploration project – commodity prices – mining stock- trade and market

A six-month halt in U.S. deep-water drilling would cost 23,247 jobs, according to an estimate by Michael Bromwich, head of the agency that regulates offshore oil exploration.

Bromwich’s July 10 memo to Interior Secretary Kenneth Salazar shows regulators weighed the economic affect of suspending drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet before Salazar issued a second moratorium on July 12. The memo was submitted to U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans as part of a voluminous administrative record supporting the agency’s actions.

“There is no question that the imposition...

As BP readied its latest fallback plan to stop oil gushing from one of its wells in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration and the company warned that the crude could continue flowing until August, compounding threats to coastal wetlands, fisheries and beaches.

White House energy and climate adviser Carol Browner declared Sunday that the oil spill was “probably the biggest environmental disaster we’ve ever faced in this country” and said that “we are prepared for the worst.” On the CBS show “Face the Nation,” she said that the “American...

Two recent reports suggest that the alternative fuel of choice over the next 20 to 30 years won’t be nuclear, coal, oil, wind or solar – but rather,
natural gas.

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted the fact that, even before the recent discovery of very large so-called “unconventional” reserves not easily recovered, natural gas had a number of clear advantages compared to other sources of energy.

First, compared to other carbon-based fuels such as oil, natural gas produces half the CO2, has none of the waste disposal problems associated with nuclear,...