BHP continues to send iron ore shipments to China from its Pilbara mines, despite a price stand-off between the resources giant and Beijing (AFR)

China is engaged in “normal economic and trade” practices, according to the Chinese govt in its first comments on the high-stakes stalemate (Australian)

Members of an Australian critical minerals contingent led by Kevin Rudd said they expected a flurry of U.S. deals following Washington meetings (Australian)

WCS, developer of half of the Simandou, suspended operations at its Kerouane mine after an accident in which three foreign employees died (Bloomberg)

MinRes has scored a legal victory that opens the door for it to access a secret agreement between the WA gov’t and Chevron (Australian)

Freeport Indonesia said that the search for 5 missing workers at the Grasberg was still ongoing, 3 weeks after the accident (Reuters)

European coal prices sank to a 19-month low of US$100/t as wind and nuclear generation soared (Bloomberg)

The federal opposition has encouraged potential buyers of BHP’s WA nickel assets to make better use of the mothballed infrastructure (AFR)

Rio has asked banks to pitch their ideas around options for its Californian borates & South African titanium dioxide mines, which were marked non-core (AFR)

Kazatomprom is considering a new listing for part of the 25% of stock not held by the Kazakh government (Bloomberg)

NexGen upsized their raising in Australia to A$600m (NXG)

St Barbara is in a halt to raise $40m at 46c (SBM)

Investogator Resources raised $10m via private placement to advance its Paris silver project (IVR)

Advance Metals completed a $13m placement for exploration (AVM)

It’s time to run the ruler over the Cobar juniors once again. Harmony Gold is the logical consolidator now with not long until they have the keys to CSA

Any time a new district gets a new operator, it’s prime for activity

To some extent, the market is already anticipating this. You only have to look as far as Peel, where the share price has rallied 56% in the two weeks since Nick Woolrych was revealed to be taking the reins, fresh from selling New World to Kinterra

Synergies aren’t as straightforward in the Cobar where deposits are spotty. But the district is severely long infrastructure and a number of deals make sense to us

For what it’s worth, we think Harmony is desperate to put as much cash into Australia as they can

A good sum will go towards building Eva in Queensland. But we expect them to be acquisitive in Cobar too

Todd Barlow, Phil King Interview (Livewire) King talks up resources bull market at 15:40

The report on the heap leach landslide at Victoria Gold last year: an initial rotational failure triggered a flow slide that travelled 1,400m (EOS)

Copper is enjoying the wrong kind of bull market (Op-ed by Javier Blas)