Shares of Peabody Energy (BTU), Arch Coal (ACI) and CONSOL Energy (CNX) rallied more than 6% in Wednesday’s trading. These companies will start reporting their second quarter results as of next week. Peabody will report on 21st, followed by Arch on 24th and CONSOL on 30th. Patriot Coal (PCX), Natural Resource (NRP) and Walter Energy (WLT) also joined the race. Patriot rose nearly 6% and Natural and Walter went up more than 4%. Walter will report on 22nd of this month and Natural on 6th of August. Patriot is yet to confirm the date. Coal demand in the U.S. is expected to remain subdued this year due to low power consumption and weak industrial activity. However, demand is growing in Asia -- especially in India and China. As per China customs, China has imported 32.2 million ton of coal through May ...

Gastar Exploration Ltd. (AMEX: GST) is an independent energy company engaged in the exploration, development, and production of natural gas and oil in the United States and Australia. The company focuses their efforts on identifying, acquiring, and exploring possible natural gas and oil properties that show the potential to produce significant product. Their emphasis rests on prospective deep structures identified through seismic and other analytical techniques, as well as unconventional natural gas reserves, such as coal bed methane (CBM).

The company’s primary coal bed methane properties are found in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana, and in the Gunnedah and Gippsland Basins of Australia. Their drilling activities are focused on exploiting their multi-year inventory of drilling locations in the Deep Bossier Sands and Knowles Limestone plays in the Hilltop area of East Texas, as well as the emerging Marcellus Shale play in Appalachia.

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In a lot of ways silver has been in recent decades the forgotten metal, struggling with an identity crisis as a poor man’s precious metal and/or a rather expensive industrial metal. In its glory days, Broken Hill in western New South Wales was known as Silver City, and to this day the highway leading into the town is so named. Broken Hill gave its name to a rather famous Proprietary, but these day’s when one thinks of BHP Billiton one doesn’t immediately think of silver, or for that matter the zinc and lead upon which the company built its foundations. Today junior mining companies are left to squabble over what commercial deposits may still remain at Broken Hill. Indeed for many years silver became merely a helpful by-product of mining for base metals occurring, as it often does, in base metal deposits. Base metal miners could sell the silver just ...