Mining is the economic activity through which theminerals in the Earth's crust are extracted. It is a source of employment and income, and it promotes regional development; but it can also create social, labor and environmental problems due to its lack of policies regulating the working conditions and extraction ina planned way, to avoid environmental deterioration.

No mineral is used in the state it is extracted; in all cases, they are all subject to some kind of process to be transformed into the mineral raw materials that the industry needs.

When they are extracted from the crust, they obtain the rocks as a compound of minerals, the first step of the way is to separate them in order to obtain the mineral you are interested in.

Iron is subjected to an alloy process with coal, with the purpose of obtaining steel, which is fudamental for industrial production.

COUNTRIES: RUSSIA, CHINA, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, USA, BRAZIL AND INDIA

COPPER is next in importance.

Chile es the largest copper producer, eventhough a considerable amount of this mineral is tranformed intheir territory, they also export it, mainly to the USA and Europe.

Oil is extracted from the wells; in order to reachh them, the underground needs to be drilled with a machine that has a diamond-tipped spinning rod. 

As it goes deeper in the grounds, a pipeline is installed to pump the oil to the surface.

Oil has a large range ofbyproducts, it is transformed inindustries called oil refineries.

Besides fuels like gasoline, gasoil and diesel, we can also obtain other polymers to manufacture plastics, lubricants, cosmetics, polyester and asphalts.

Thousand of oil barrels are extracted every day throughout the world; in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa, oil extraction has a great influence in the political relationship of power. This mineral has the highest market value, because of the large variety of byproducts it has.