Feature Stories
Founder of Alpha Natural Resources Mike Quillen: ‘You Treat People How You Want to be Treated’
May 18, 2012
As the company has grown, so have the stories: of helicopters arriving in the nick of time; anonymous donations that made the difference; one-sentence e-mails with enough wisdom to guide a man throughout a career. Together, they built a kind of…
Gold! Haiti Hopes Ore Find Will Spur Mining Boom
May 18, 2012
Its capital is blighted with earthquake rubble. Its countryside is shorn of trees, chopped down for fuel. And yet, Haiti’s land may hold the key to relieving centuries of poverty, disaster and disease: There is gold hidden in its hills —…
Newcomer Revives Coal Mine Near Tamaqua Pennsylvania
May 9, 2012
When New York investment manager Doug Topkis bought an 8,000-acre coalfield near Tamaqua in bankruptcy court two years ago, he didn’t know anthracite from bituminous. He does now. Rebuilding a Pennsylvania coal business in the age of alternative fuels and in…
Real Life Mining Stories With Leadership Lessons: It Takes Leaders & Followers to Build Great Things
May 9, 2012
On May 20, 2007, I was a featured speaker on a tour of “The Little Cities of Black Diamond.” South of Nelsonville, we passed the Eclipse Company Town built to house coal miners and their families around 1900. On the way…
World’s First Seafloor Mine Signs First Customer
April 30, 2012
Canada-based mining firm Nautilus Minerals has signed China’s Tongling Nonferrous Metals Group as the first customer of its pioneering Papua New Guinean seafloor mine. Nautilus, which is listed on the Canadian and London stock exchanges and has offices in Australia, said…
Mining Companies in Global Talent War
April 27, 2012
Bruno Rizzuto’s father, Cesare, was 19 when he got off a boat in Halifax from southern Italy in 1951. With no coat, and “5 cents in his pocket” he headed for the gold mines of Timmins, Ontario, where he worked underground…
Kennecott Rio Tinto’s Wildlife Biologist Ann Neville Saves Wildlife Next to Mine
April 25, 2012
Ann Neville knows environmentalists are skeptical when they hear she works as a wildlife biologist for Kennecott Rio Tinto. She admits that even she struggled when she began working in 1997 for the big copper-mining company with operations on the west…
Town in Kansas Prepares to Share Mining History With the World, Opening of the Miners Hall Museum
April 25, 2012
At least a century ago, when Belgian immigrant Frank Leroy headed to No. 16 Mine each day to work as a mule skinner, he wouldn’t have dreamed that his lunch bucket and carbide lamp would one day be on display behind…
121-year-old Western Colorado Mining Flume Clings to its Secrets
April 17, 2012
There is something about the tattered remnants of a 121-year-old mining marvel that keeps drawing the curious back to this remote canyon along Colorado 141. Those who keep returning to measure, survey, photograph and examine the mysterious structure known as the…
Real Life Mining Stories With Leadership Lessons: Don’t Leave Leadership Training to Chance
April 17, 2012
From 1974 through 1976 the coal mine in which I worked experienced a number of wildcat strikes. Several of these strikes lasted more than a week. During this time, I was a member of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).…
