Over the last ten years, the value of Peru’s mineral production has increased dramatically. During the five-year period from 2005 to 2010, mining exports increased from $9.8 billion to $21.7 billion, raising the country’s mining profile internationally and presenting significant consulting opportunities.

The diamond industry has been on something of a rollercoaster ride since the global financial crisis of 2008, with prices plummeting in 2008 and 2009, before rebounding to reach historically high levels in 2010 and 2011. This pattern of extremes was replicated in 2012, with retail sales of diamonds growing 1.8 percent from 2011 to $72.1 billion at the same time that overall prices for rough and polished diamonds declined by 14 percent and 13 percent respectively.

If you were to set out today from Chile’s capital city, Santiago, and head 1,650 kilometres north you would eventually come to what is the world’s largest open pit mine. Based 2,870 metres above sea level, the Chuquicamata Mine is without question one of the jewels in the crown of Codelco, the planet’s largest producer of copper.

Since the early 1990s, the use of modern technology and refined models has seen gold exploration in Tanzania grow rapidly, in turn transforming the country into one of the fastest-emerging gold producers in Africa, behind only South Africa and Ghana. Yet despite the relatively recent expansion of the sector, the presence of gold beneath Tanzania has been known about since it was first discovered in the Geita region in the late 1800s.

The group, also made up of Total, Shell and two Chinese firms has won the right to explore the Libra oilfield’s estimated 8-12 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves for the next 35 years.

Already entitled to a 30 percent stake in the project, as stated in the rules governing the auction of the Libra rights, Petrobras also obtained a further ten percent stake in the field. French oil giant Total and Anglo-Dutch Shell will hold 20 percent each, while Chinese state companies CNPC and CNOOC take ten percent each.

More and more organizations are outsourcing software product development but many are hard pressed to know much about managing a team that may be thousands of miles away on another continent. Too often, companies think about offshore product development (OPD) only as a means to cutting costs and accelerating time to market. Such an approach can produce poor results with your projects if you don’t take into account certain issues like cultural barriers, metrics and workflows.

Emerging markets such as the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa – provide a wealth of opportunities for businesses looking to grow their global market share. Not only are these countries home to billions of potential customers, they are a great place to source materials and supplies at a low cost.

Construction of the Hinkley Point C plant in Somerset will be overseen by a consortium led by France’s EDF Energy and including Chinese companies China National Nuclear Corporation and China General Nuclear Power Corporation as minority shareholders in the project. The involvement of the two latter companies comes in the wake of an announcement by the UK Chancellor that Chinese firms would be allowed to invest in civil nuclear projects in the UK going forward.

The Senate, which is controlled by the Democrat party, passed by 81 votes to 18 a measure that extends the Treasury's authority to borrow until February 7. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed it by 285 votes to 144. Seen as a victory on the part of President Obama's Democrats and a defeat for the Republicans - in particular their Tea Party faction, which saw the budget crisis as an opportunity to undermine the President's health care, the vote signalled a return to work for hundreds of thousands of US government employees.