Shares in Australian miners gained ground, with investors preferring to take the lead from strong gains in shares in New York.
The market shrugged off softer commodity prices for the most part and followed the leads of mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto, which added 1.5% to $29.19 and 1.1% to $76.97, respectively.
According to Credit Suisse, Rio could be looking to boost its copper output with acquisitions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and has maintained an Outperform rating on Rio with a $97.72 target price.
Rio copper boss Bret Clayton told London analysts that a team visited the Congo recently with another group to follow, with any opportunities needing to offer output of more than 200,000 tonnes a year copper and long-life reserves.
The pot of gold was at the end of the rainbow for gold miners today after the price of the metal rallied to its highest in nearly three weeks.
The spot gold price was last quoted at $US663.40 per ounce, with gold miners leading the charge including Newcrest Mining, which jumped 3.5% to $23.13, while Sino Gold Mining rose 4.2% to $6.46 and Bolnisi climbed 6.2% to $3.09.
Despite a tumble in nickel prices during the week, shares in nickel miners also took the lead from stronger overall equities market, led by Independence Group’s 3.9% rise.
News that the Western Australia’s Department of Environment and Conservation may suspend nickel loadings if risks were identified at the Esperance port had little negative effect on nickel players which ship nickel via the port, with Jubilee Mines’ share price rising 2.4% to $16.38, while LionOre Mining International fell marginally 1.2% to $17.91.
Uranium was also in the news today, with the Australian Labor Party’s longstanding “no new uranium mines policy” rumoured to change at a national conference next month.
South Australian Mineral Resources Development Minister Paul Holloway told the Paydirt Uranium Conference in Adelaide that “the State Government is very confident that the no new mines policy will change, allowing South Australia’s competitive advantage in the uranium sector to come to the fore”
“It’s my opinion that South Australia will move fairly quickly to change our policy,” he said, noting that any policy change won’t affect existing operations and already strong support for the change from the state’s premier and other ministers.
Metex Resources climbed 25% to 12.5c on news that its joint venture with CSIRO, Carbon Energy, had confirmed at least one and potentially two sites suitable to undertake a trial for underground coal gasification following drilling in Queensland’s Surat Basin.
Metex acquired 50% stake in Carbon Energy last year. The JV comes at a time when the Federal Government is placing greater focus on the gas-to-liquids and coal-to-liquids alternative energy sectors.
Accent Resources also had an eventful day, up 25% to 15c on turnover of 1.1 million shares on news it had confirmed discovery of a new vanadium province at Katanning, 250km southeast of Perth.
Assays of up to 0.81% vanadium, 8.4% titanium and 53% iron were reported.
Meanwhile, market debutant Avalon Minerals opened at a 10% premium to its issue price of 20c (see separate story).
At the other end of the spectrum, Jervois Mining slumped to 2.6c for the day, an 18.8% fall on heavy trading of 106 million shares.
The slump follows talks with Intec over a possible merger but Jervois says it isn’t interested, as the proposal doesn’t reflect the real value of assets or their potential.
The company has vast low-grade nickel/cobalt resource at Young in central NSW, and is still researching ore processing routes to extract minerals.
