Mark Mentiplay

Premier Alan Carpenter has confirmed Oakajee as the preferred site for a new privately funded deep-water port, 20 km north of Geraldton.

The first shipment from the world’s largest ammonia plant in northern Western Australia – the first downstream processing facility in the North West based on local gas production – will leave the Port of Dampier next month.

Is this a reversal of the 1999-2000 trend of mining companies leaping into technology?

Patience is a virtue often ascribed to the Chinese, and it’s something Perth-based Tianshan Goldfields Ltd has successfully applied to its extensive exploration program in the north-west of China.

Magma Metals Ltd, another float out of gold and uranium explorer Metex Resources Ltd and headed by former executives of Sons of Gwalia Ltd, is seeking to raise $6 million to explore a suite of base metals and platinum tenements in Western Australia and Ca

A clutch of small-to-medium Western Australian gold companies is carving out a significant niche in West Africa’s emerging, key mineral fields.

A new Western Australian gold company has consolidated 70 old gold mines in the Victorian Alps with the aim of resuming production and building it to 100,000 ounces a year.

The rebirth of insolvent Matrix Oil NL as Emerald Oil & Gas NL has moved closer to reality with a $3.5 million raising to allow the new company to participate in at least four wells in Western Australia and the US within a year of re-listing in late May.

At a time when the wine industry throughout Australia is feeling a lot of pain, Frankland River producer Ferngrove is awaiting the second part of a recent $10 million capital expansion.

The pressure for a new deep water port north of Geraldton has increased, with a major Chinese steel company taking a 50 per cent stake in Gindalbie Metals Ltd’s $1 billion Karara iron ore project in the Mid-West.

The Bank of Queensland is launching a major push into Western Australia, starting with the opening of a branch in Subiaco on April 26.

Western Australia could be witnessing the dawning of a bio fuel age, the beginning of the triumph of fuels wrought from the soil over hydrocarbon fossil fuels from deep underground.

Wesfarmers Energy has awarded Bunbury thermal processing and materials handling company Ansac Pty Ltd the design/construction contract for its $8 million demonstration plant at Collie.

BP Australia has signed an agreement to buy the entire output from a new $100 million ethanol plant to be built in Kwinana, just south of Perth.

Australia is trying to claw its way back into the global resources capital markets but it may already be too late.

Aspiring Perth copper producer Equinox Minerals Ltd has added another $40.5 million to an earlier $170M raising to pave the way for production from its $750 million Lumwana copper/uranium project in Zambia in about two years’ time.

The decision to list and source capital has as much to do with the project as it does with the market in which the listing or raising is being considered.

While not unusual in the North Sea, the Middle East and other parts of the world, it is the first time in Australia that a shared drilling program for a number of different operators has been established.

Aspiring Perth copper producer Equinox Minerals Ltd has added another $40.5 million to an earlier $170 million raising to pave the way for production from its $750 million Zambian copper project in late 2007/early 2008.

Mining boss Michael Kiernan recently returned from a national road show aimed at shoring up Consolidated Minerals Ltd and walked straight into the firestorm that threatens to consume Croesus Mining NL.

If outgoing Consolidated Minerals Ltd managing director Michael Kiernan is a rough diamond, his anointed successor, the smooth urbane Rodney Baxter, is the polished result.

The real problem facing mining companies in the global context is not demand but the ability to supply.

International oil and gas well construction and services company, the Peak Group, has kicked off a unique multi-well, multi-operator management project off Western Australia’s north coast worth over $100 million.

International oil and gas well construction and services company, the Peak Group, has kicked off a $100 million-plus drilling programme off Western Australia's north coast.

New figures out this week paint a bleak picture for minerals exploration in Western Australia. Put simply, the locals are losing out to more aggressive operators from the eastern states and overseas.

Small Perth steel building products company JVGlobal Ltd has quietly clinched two important joint ventures with two of the biggest groups in rapidly expanding India and the United Arab Emirates.

Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue Metals Group is expected to finish its internal financing plans this week so US bank Citigroup can start the much-awaited funding campaign for the company’s $2.5 billion iron ore project in the Pilbara.

A small, low-key Perth gas exploration company is on the brink of production from strategic reserves in the middle of a major Italian industrial province already struggling under the real threat of having its traditional gas supplies cut.

While Western Australia’s so called “V8 economy” was driven by major resources projects more than any other state, its intra-government coordination to facilitate developments was the worst in Australia.

Shanghai Baosteel Group Corp

China’s largest airline, China Southern Airlines, is putting the pressure on its $35 million-plus China Southern West Australian Flying College operations in Perth and Merredin to produce more commercial pilots.

Many of China’s major resources and trading houses have quietly positioned themselves in Perth, seeking a foothold in the market for the raw materials needed to maintain their country’s rampant economic growth.