Q1 – 2011

What Are We Teaching Our Children?

By Jason Hayes, American Coal Council

There is a disturbing lack of accurate and balanced energy information provided for kids in our schools today, and if the actions of one of the nation’s venerable education-focused publishing houses were any indication, school children across the country would be ill served in this area.

In May 2011, educational publisher Scholastic removed “the United States of Energy” from its list of publications. As a non-profit coal industry association had sponsored the printing of this publication, Scholastic representatives claimed to have pulled it to remove any taint of organizational or funding [...]

Energy Riches Attract Neighbors and Outside Interests

By John C.K. Daly, Oilprice.com

Pity poor Mongolia, bereft of fiscal resources, caught between the ambitions of its superpower neighbors, Russia and China.

Ulaan Bator’s situation is akin to interwar Poland, dexterously attempting to reconcile its foreign policy between the USSR’s hammer and Nazi Germany’s hard place. Who will ultimately benefit is anyone’s guess, but the country’s nascent energy and mineralogical riches have opened the land of Genghis Khan to a fierce bidding war whose ultimate outcome is unclear at best.

The nation is essentially empty, its 2.8 million citizens producing an average population density of just [...]

By Salva Resources

Indian steel, power and commodity investors have featured heavily in recent mining press due to acquisitions and sustained interest in international mining assets. China, Japan and Korea have led the charge to secure coal supplies from mineral-rich countries like Australia and Indonesia with great success. Although a late entrant, India appears to be playing catch-up in the coal asset acquisition in a wider geographical horizon, including South Africa, Mozambique, the USA and Canada. This article describes India’s endeavour to lessen dependency on overseas coal exporters, which may have important implications for global coal trading dynamics.

What’s Driving Overseas Acquisitions?

India [...]