The Newfoundland government spent the Nov. 28-Dec. 4 report period assessing an Alcoa feasibility study into the possibility of reviving the stalled Lower Churchill hydroelectric project in Labrador. The power would be used to operate one or more proposed aluminum smelters. There is no word yet on whether the provincial government will insist that all bauxite ore be smelted and refined in the country in which it was mined. Over the week, Alcoa dropped 18 to US$38.10.
The rest of the U.S.-listed base metal majors were mixed: BHP Billiton was up 26 to US$10.60; Phelps Dodge fell $1.47 to US$34.69; Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold‘s B shares traded up $1.45 to US$13.79; Rio Tinto marched forward $1.30 to US$77.30; Anglo American rose 45 to US$15.45; Southern Peru Copper was off 2 to US$11.15; and WMC fell 36 to US$19.45.
The gold miners saw little movement as gold prices traded tightly around the mid-US$270s: Newmont Mining rose 30 to US$19.77; AngloGold sank 93 to US$16.97; Gold Fields slipped two pennies to US$4.70; Homestake Mining advanced 37 to US$8.02; Ashanti Goldfields was up 12 to US$3.48; and Compania de Minas Buenaventura rose 39 to US$18.39.
Silver miner Coeur d’Alene rose 6 to US72 as it announced the bagging of a US$760,000 grant from the U.S. Trade and Development Agency to complete a final feasibility study at the San Bartolome silver project near Potosi, Bolivia.
Stillwater Mining rebounded 51 to US$15.76 on resurgent prices for platinum and palladium.
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