Australian gold miners are now expanding their gold production at a remarkable rate. Our gold industry had been severely bashed about by Peter Costello when he was the Federal Govt Treasurer. Costello sold off Australia’s a lot of our gold reserves for ~$350 dollars and shredded Australia’s gold miners in the process. http://www.australian-gold.com/decline.html . (Gordon brown made an even bigger mistake when he sold off Britain’s Gold)

Now with the price of gold on a sustained high Australian Gold producers have outperformed over the last quarter with a 22% (12t) rise in production from both old mines and new mines. Moreover our explorers are again actively hunting and several explorers are making the transition to production.

The merger of Lihir into Newcrest has given Australia one of the world’s biggest gold miners and their is a large gap between NCM and the next rank of producers….

For many Gold investors the action for outstanding gains is in the explorers that are heading into production….Australia has literally hundreds of companies involved in gold exploration and near term production – the so called emerging producers.

* Australian Gold Explorers with 10m – 1m ozs resource

* Australian Gold Explorers with 1m – 100000 0zs resource

* Australian Gold Explorers with resources of 100,000 ozs of gold or less

* List of producers

High-grade gold outlined over 200m strike length at Treasure Island
Latest results provide more evidence of potential for substantial outcropping resource

Highlights
 Rock chip sampling returns more high grade gold results including 58.9g/t, 48.4g/t, 41.3g/t and 39.8g/t
 Results stem from sampling conducted at regular intervals over 200m strike length of the eastern quartz vein array
 Numerous high-grade samples, up to 33g/t, were also collected from the quartz vein array at the southern edge of the island over 140m of strike
 Significant evidence of fine visible gold disseminated throughout samples
 Drilling program to follow-up sampling results scheduled for early in new year

“These results are extremely exciting and highlight the substantial upside at what is already emerging as a highly desirable address in geological terms,” Mr Baird said.

Ramelius is an ASX listed gold producer that is markedly stepping up production and their resource base.

In terms of Market Cap less cash divided by Resources Ramelius is a 5  (market cap ~$232 cash of $80m… and resources of 3,502,244 ozs) whereas AND is at 500.

A comparison of Australia’s gold producers ( done 5 days ago )  places RMS at the lower end of the current gold producers. Moreover RMS has very good grades, has all of its assets in Australia and their deposit is open at depth. I spoke with them recently following a company presentation and what they showed me was very impressive.

Today’s announcement gives more icing on the cake:
Drilling at the Mt Magnet gold project in Western Australia by Ramelius Resources (ASX: RMS) has been primarily designed to test existing mineralization, with the current pit designs and mineralization near and at depth below the pits.

Drilling completed has targeted the Saturn, Mars and Titan pits within the broader Galaxy project area, with new significant intersections below:

– 13m @ 8.48 g/t gold, including 6m @ 17.0 g/t gold;
– 23m @ 2.06 g/t gold, including 1m @ 11.0 g/t gold, plus 50m @ 2.47 g/t gold including 1m @ 21.0 g/t gold;
– 38m @ 6.32 g/t gold, including 3m @ 10.9 g/t gold and 13m @ 12.0 g/t gold; and
– 8m @ 4.10 g/t gold, including 2m @ 11.6 g/t gold.
In July 2010, Ramelius purchased the Mt Magnet gold project for A$40 million from Harmony Gold (Australia) Pty Ltd.

Mt Magnet has previously produced in excess of 5 million ounces of gold, highlighting significant potential for new discoveries.

I hold RMS

World Bank president Robert Zoellick has called on bickering G20 nations to bring gold back into the global monetary system as an anchor to guide currency movements.

Ahead of a Group of 20 summit this week in Seoul, Zoellick said an updated gold standard could help retool the world economy at a time of serious tensions over currencies and US monetary policy.

He said the world needed a new regime to succeed the “Bretton Woods II” system of floating currencies, which has been in place since the fixed-rate currency system linked to gold broke down in 1971.

The new system “is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi (Chinese yuan) that moves towards internationalisation and then an open capital account”, he wrote in Monday’s Financial Times.

“The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values,” Zoellick said in a commentary piece.

“Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today.”

http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8120784

Sydney, Nov 8, 2010 (ABN Newswire) – The “Original Gold Bug”, James Dines will give a two hour presentation at the Gold Symposium on Wednesday, November 10 at 2pm at the Amora Jamison, Sydney. In May 2009 Mr Dines became the “Original Rare Earths Bug” predicting a steep rise in their stock which in fact took place in much the same way his predictions about gold were right, both when to buy and when to sell. His Dines Letter is a sought after publication globally, his rare live presentations attract huge audiences.

The Panel Discussion that follows the Dines media opportunity features three north American experts. President and CEO of Rare Element Resources, Don Ranta, Jeff Phillips of Quest Rare Minerals and Michael Hundson, founder and member of the board of Tasman Metals will discuss the global fascination with the rare earth industry. As China controls the bulk of the market, the panel will discuss how this impacts on the rest of the world.

• Australian Gold Explorers with 10m – 1m ozs resource
  

• Australian Gold Explorers with 1m – 100000 0zs resource

• Australian Gold Explorers with resources of 100,000 ozs of gold or less

Data updated to June 2010.

From Australian-Shares.com/forums Sparty’s Blog

For the first time in 36 years, Iran will assume the rotating presidency of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. It takes effect next year. The appointment was announced Thursday at the start of this week’s OPEC meeting in Vienna.

Iran’s oil ministry’s official website, SHANA, announced that Iranian Oil Minister Masoud Mirkazemi will become the elected president of the 12-member oil cartel. Iran is OPEC’s second-largest oil producer and was unanimously elected during the 157th session of OPEC’s ministerial meeting.

OPEC, which provides 35 percent of global oil demand, also reached an agreement on its oil production target. The cartel said Thursday it would make “no changes” to its official oil production target of 24.84 million barrels a day.

OPEC comprises Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Venezuela.

For those of you old enough to remember the OPEC Arab Oil Embargo where we had pictures of men dancing around fires with automatic rifles and a sudden and nasty shift in the world’s economy perhaps the news above will send a shudder down your spines. Iran would have to be one of the world’s most extreme states.

For Iran to gain the presidency of OPEC and thus be able to strongly influence the direction of supply and price should, I think,  cause some disquiet amongst those dependent on oil imports.

So why post this on a GOLD blog… well in times of great uncertainty GOLD performs well and as expensive oil will not be at all helpful to the US economy we may see an uplift in the amount of “Quantitative Easing” (printing money) that will set gold on fire.

It could also be a great time to stock up on oil companies that are currently producing. Here in Australia our junior oils have been down a fair bit and I expect them to start to rise in the near future. Australian-Shares.com allows you to search for OIL companies listed on our ASX.

Some to watch closely are IMO are ASX Codes: AWE , MPO, HZN, TAP, ROC, and at the more speculative end AOK, NDO, OEL, and about to drill OBL, LKO, CTP. The last three are drilling company makers.

Drawing a longer bow, you may also look at what will happen to oil supplies if OPEC sustains a supply imbalance that results in some of the newer alternative methods of oil production coming on-stream. The leading technology in this area will be  UCG-GTL (underground coal gasification – gas to liquids) where one ton of coal can be burnt underground to produce syngas that can be converted to 1.7 barrels of oil for around $28 to $35 AUD. If this were to occur then having LNC a proven UCG-GTL play and CTP who have around a trillion tons of UCG suitable coal would present a remarkable opportunity.

There would probably also be a re-focusing on the transition to an electron-economy where the various Rare Earth Elements, Lithium, Lead , Copper and Cobalt may also spring into life.

Disclaimer: I hold STO, WPL,  AWE, MPO, OBL, LKO and CTP for their oil production and potential. GXY Australia’s only ASX listed Lithium producer, LNC and CTP for their UCG-GTL prospects and LYC , the world’s first new supplier of Refined Rare Earths in 2011, some years ahead of the rest.