Frik Els , Editor

All the money sloshing around in the financial system has to be poured into something. The latest study of mergers and acquisitions in the resource sector show that two of the four biggest deals of 2011 worth over $3bn are financial companies taking over natural resource companies, not strategic investments by other miners. Lower down the scales – deals worth $50m or more – financial investors are also finding ways in. In 2009 only 3.6% of transaction involved investment houses and corporate takeover artists. By the first quarter of 2011 that figure had jumped to 16.1%.

Hot on the heels of a lacklustre listing by Swiss commodities and mining behemoth Glencore, news comes of another multi-billion dollar natural resources IPO going awry. Resourcehouse planned to raise $3.6bn on the Hong Kong market on Thursday but has now postponed the listing to at least the end of the month. The Australian iron ore and coal miner has made three previous attempts to go public in 2009 and 2010.

World number one fertilizer company Potash Corp, received a fillip from S&P on Wednesday after the ratings agency upped the company’s rating to stable from negative and reaffirmed its investment grade corporate credit rating of A-. S&P believes Potash Corp. will benefit from strong fundamentals in the potash business and from the fact that its mines are considered low cost and have long reserve lives. Potash Corp, worth some $46bn on the stock market, has attracted renewed interest from investors on the back of rising global food prices, record earnings at the company, and after a hostile takeover bid was scuppered by the Canadian federal government in November last year.

According to The Globe & Mail, Christophe de Margerie, the CEO of French energy giant Total on a tour of Canada’s oil sands with members of the company’s international advisory board this week, believes the resource is playing an increasingly important role in setting the global price of crude. Through a string of deals, kicked off by the $1.67bn acquisition of Deer Creek in 2005 and topped by the $1.7bn partnership with Suncor announced late last year, Total has become one of the largest oil sands players. The company plans to spend $20bn in the oil sands by 2020, but no further acquisition are planned reports the Calgary Herald.

According to testimony before the US Congress concerning the construction of the $7bn Keystone XL pipeline extension from Alberta to Texas, crude produced by Canada’s oil sands, which represent just over half the country’s total production, has already surpassed the total volume of imports from the US number two supplier Mexico. Since 2000 Canada’s oil sands output has more than doubled: from 600,000 barrels to about 1.5m barrels per day in 2010. Canada supplies 2m barrels per day or 22% of US crude oil imports, up from 15% a decade earlier. The sands’ 175bn barrels of recoverable oil places Canadian oil reserves third in the world behind Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Klondike Silver Corp. announced on Tuesday it has arranged for a private placement of up to 4,000,000 units for total proceeds of up to $1,000,000. Proceeds from the private placement will be used for exploration expenditures on the Company’s Yukon, British Columbia and Ontario mineral properties as well as for general working capital. Klondike Silver is a member of the Hughes Exploration Group of Companies.

The Santiago Times reported that Sebastián Pinera, president of Chile, signed a bill which if approved by Congress, would eliminate a substantial source of revenue for Chile’s armed forces and at the same time relieve a massive burden on the country’s state mining company. Under current legislation dating back to the Second World War, 10% of revenues from Chile’s National Copper Corporation, Codelco, are directed to the nation’s armed forces. Codelco is the world’s largest copper mining company and accounts for some 11% of global copper production, but the tax has contributed to years of underinvestment and the prospect of falling output at the miner just as copper prices hit record highs.

Alto Group Holdings, a mining and commodities trade company headquartered in New York, announced on Monday the acquisition of the Great Excelsior Mine in Washington State. The Great Excelsior Mine, located in Washington State, was a gold-silver producer which was forced to close in 1918 due to falling metal prices and a shortage of supplies. This mining property has been explored by numerous mining companies over the years.

Gold demand surged in the first quarter of this year as purchases of the precious metal for investment climbed 11% to 981.3 tons in the first three months according to the latest World Gold Council report. Much of the increase was as a result of buying of the physical metal – purchases of gold bars and coins shot up 52% year on year to 366 tons, representing a virtual doubling in value to $16bn. The report from the association of gold producers comes as the biggest producers sound warnings on Monday that any major pullback in the metal’s price below $1,000 could jeopardize the primary supply of gold.

Canpotex held a ground breaking ceremony at the railcar maintenance and staging facility located south of Potash Corp’s Lanigan mine on Friday. In business since 1972, Canpotex is the exclusive offshore marketing company for the three big provincial Saskatchewan potash players and maintains a fleet of 5,000 specialty railcars for its customers in about 30 countries around the world.