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Thursday, March 12, 2009.

From Creamer Media in Johannesburg, I'm Shannon O'Donnell.

Making headlines today:

Research and consulting firm Wood Mackenzie senior coal analyst, Xavier Prevost, said that all three of Southern Africa's main coal-exporting ports were rail-constrained.

Prevost said that inadequate rail capacity wasn't only limiting exports to below-port capacity at the Richards Bay Coal Terminal, but also at the ports of Maputo and Durban.

He said rail wasn't able to accommodate the volume of coal that the mining industry wanted to export. Also, the problem seemed to be a long-term problem, with no end in sight.

Prevost said said that he didn't know when this problem would be solved.

On Thursday, Australia's parliament voted overwhemingly to defeat a motion aimed at sinking China's proposed 19,5-billion-dollar investment in Anglo-Australian miner, Rio Tinto.

The Greens party had asked the upper house Senate to call upon Treasurer Wayne Swan to deny foreign-investment approval for the deal, unless he imposed a virtually impossible condition. Greens opposes the investment by state-owned aluminium group Chinalco.

The motion by Greens leader Bob Brown called for Swan to obtain assurances that the Chinese government couldn't appoint or remove any executives of Chinalco.

Brown believes Beijing could use Chinalco's influence for its own ends.

Chinalco plans to pay 12,3-billion-dollars for stakes in key iron-ore, copper and aluminium assets from debt-laden Rio and 7,2-billion-dollars for convertible notes which double its equity interest in the company to 18%.

Also making headlines:

The strike at gold producer Pamodzi Gold's Free State operations continues.
TSX-listed Khan Resources hopes to start talks on its Mongolia investment pact by mid-year.
Global investor Black Rock increases its investment in coal company Coal of Africa.
And, the world's dependence on coal for more than 40% of its power needs isn't showing any signs of decreasing.

That's a round up of news making headlines today. For more on these and other stories please visit miningweekly.com.