Extractive Industries
Mining
OZ Minerals Completes Sale of Cambodian Assets
Australian mining firm OZ Minerals announced yesterday that it has successfully sold its Cambodian mining assets to Renaissance Minerals Limited for AU$17.8 million, or $19.2 million, after years of disappointing gold exploration results here. According to the statement, Renaissance now controls the 1,100-square-km core of the ...
Reckless mining in Prey Lang takes toll on environment
Chemical substances used in about 3,000 mining drills operating in the Prey Lang forest in Kratie and Kampong Thom provinces are wreaking environmental havoc and making people sick, a report by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights released yesterday says. Substances used by a number of ...
Cambodia suspends new land concessions to companies
Cambodia’s government, facing growing protests by villagers and warnings about disappearing wilderness, suspended the granting of land to domestic and foreign companies on Monday in a move to curb forced evictions and illegal logging. Rights groups in the impoverished but resource-rich Southeast Asian country said the ...
http://af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL4E8G79HB20120507
Mu Sochua calls out Aussie mining firms
Opposition parliamentarian Mu Sochua has taken aim at Australian mining companies eyeing the Kingdom’s resources, travelling to their home soil to lobby the halls of power. Mu Sochua cited fears that Australian companies awarded exploration concessions in Ratanakkiri and Mondulkiri provinces will treat ethnic minorities there ...
China reaps concession windfalls
About half of the land concessions granted since 1994 are in the hands of Chinese companies, according to data released yesterday by the Cambodian Center for Human Rights. Ouch Leng, CCHR land reform project coordinator, said that from 1994 to 2012, the Cambodian government granted 4,615,745 ...
Mining revenues questioned
The Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy earned US$1.52 million in non-tax revenues in 2011, a figure that an opposition lawmaker said was far lower than the actual revenues brought in on mining licences. The intake was more than 15 per cent higher than in 2010, ...
http://www.phnompenhpost.com/index.php/2012032255187/Business/mining-revenues-questioned.html
More Than 250 Firms Hold Mining Licenses
Almost 200 mining companies currently hold government licenses to mine construction materials such as granite, or to extract minerals, while another 53 firms are licensed to explore for mineral wealth, according to a Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy report released Friday. Among these firms, 47 ...
Sold
Last year saw a record increase in economic land concessions and the area controlled by agro-industrial companies jumped to more than 2 million hectares nationwide, according to human rights groups who track such projects. Mining companies are also flocking to Cambodia and those already have ...
http://www.camnet.com.kh/cambodia.daily/selected_features/Carving%20Up%20Cambodia.pdf
Cambodia grants mine exploratory licenses to 24 firms in 2011: gov't report
Cambodia’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy had issued mineral resource exploratory licenses to 24 local and foreign companies in the past year. According to the annual report of the ministry’s mineral resources department released on Friday, the firms are mostly Cambodian-owned ones and those from ...
Xinhua
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/7753471.html
Investment in mining operations falls sharply
Guangxi Nonferrous Metal Group invested $21.95 million in the construction of a steel processing plant, the data shows. The Chinese company planned to invest as much as $500 million in Preah Vihear province, China’s state-owned Xinhua news agency reported in November. China’s Xing Yuan Kang Yeak ...
Students Demand More Information on Resource Extraction
Most Cambodian university students have heard of their country’s fledging extractive industry. But with little access to information, few are aware of how revenue from this industry is being managed. Most of this information remains unavailable, and some are now voicing their concerns about corruption ...
No Investigation of OZ Minerals Deal, Police Say
The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have decided not to investigate the Australian mining company OZ Minerals, saying information that the firm paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to family members of officials in the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy (Mime) when buying out its ...
Oz Minerals Sells M'Kiri Gold Assets
After more than three years of disappointment in its search for large gold deposits in Mondolkiri province, Australian mining firm OZ Minerals has decided to sell its Cambodian assets to another Australian company In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange, OZ Minerals said that it ...
Good ties boost investment, trade, tourism between Cambodia, China
The bilateral relations between Cambodia and China in terms of investment, trade and tourism have become stronger in the past year thanks to the two countries’ good relations, said officials Friday. Cambodia attracted China’s investments of 1.19 billion U.S. dollars in 2011, up 71 percent from ...
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2012-02/17/c_131416641.htm
Damages from mine to cost at least $4m
The government said yesterday that a gold mine in Kompong Cham province that has damaged about 1 square km of land with chemical waste would cost at least $4 million to clean up. Speaking at a workshop in Phnom Penh on revenue transparency, Sim Sisokhaly, director ...
Digging of deep quarry halted after protesters block road
Authorities in Phnom Penh’s Dangkao district have ordered a land excavation company to stop digging an enormous quarry in Prek Kampoes commune that villagers claim has damaged surrounding rice paddies. Last Wednesday, about 100 villagers blocked National Road 2, burning car tires in protest against the ...
China firm plans bauxite processing plant in Kratie
China’s Erdos Hongjun planned to build a bauxite processing plant in Kratie province as part of the company’s US$1.5 billion venture in the Kingdom’s northeast, provincial officials said yesterday. The plant would serve Erdos’s mine in neighbouring Mondulkiri, an exploration licence for which was granted by ...
Kingdom's three-year land rush
The government has granted more than 7 million hectares of land to private companies through concessions since 2008, with 222 private companies claiming more than 2 million hectares alone in economic land concessions, rights group Adhoc said yesterday. Ouch Leng, head of Adhoc’s land program, said ...
Mine concession sale planned in Ratanakkiri
Astra Resources, parent company of Australia’s Astra Mining, will finalise within two months the acquisition of a 222-square-kilometre gold concession in Cambodia’s Ratanakkiri province, the company announced yesterday. Astra, which listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange September 30, is aiming for large and speedy gold production ...
Ongpin’s Atok buys Hong Kong company
Atok-Big Wedge Co. Inc., a listed company owned by the group of former Trade minister Roberto Ongpin, acquired Tidemark Holdings Ltd., a Hong Kong company that owns 25.9 percent of Forum Energy Plc, an oil and gas firm controlled by Philex Mining Corp. Atok-Big Wedge said ...
Brighton grows in Mondulkiri
Mining concession buy-outs will make Brighton Mining Limited one of the Kingdom’s largest miners by concession size in Cambodia’s Mondulkiri province, according to a company statement released yesterday. Brighton, an ASX-listed company, has completed negotiations with Summer Gold Investment Pty Limited for mining concessions in Mondulkiri ...
Brighton Mining Group to acquire Cambodian gold mining assets
Brighton Mining Group (ASX: BTN) has completed negotiations for the acquisition of a major interest in gold mining assets held directly or indirectly by Brighton Mining Limited (BML), boosting its concession holdings in Cambodia. These include the interest of BML in the Cambodian concessions held by ...
Chinese company given license to go for gold in Kratie
The government has given a Chinese mining company the right to extract gold from 28 square km of land in Kratie province’s Sambor district, a provincial official said yesterday. On July 5, the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy granted Hing Yuan Hanng Yeak Co Ltd ...
Kuwait-India JV to explore for gold, iron in Cambodia
Kuwait’s Pima International Co and D&D Pattnaik Group of India have jointly established Pima D&D International Co to explore for gold and iron in Cambodia The firm plans to invest between US$10 million and $15 million in gold and iron exploration in Kampong Chhnang, Kratie and ...