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Escondida investments to boost production
The owners of the giant Escondida copper mine in Chile, dominated by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto with 57.5% and 30% respectively, have agreed to spend US$4.5bn on two new projects, while also announcing an increase in reserves.
Escondida was discovered by J David Lowell in 1981 and is now the world’s largest copper mine.
The two new projects will underpin higher production at Escondida over the next decade, and will counter a decline in grades and output over recent years.
Organic Growth Project 1 (OGP1) will replace the Los Colorados concentrator with a new 152,000 tonne per day (tpd) plant and allow access to higher grade ore located underneath the existing facilities.
Construction will begin in February 2012 with commissioning anticipated the first half of the 2015 calendar year. The project will cost US$3.8 billion and is expected to create up to 7,000 jobs during the construction phase.
The second Oxide Leach Area Project (OLAP) will create a new dynamic leaching pad and mineral handling system that will include several overland conveyers. The new pad will maintain oxide leaching capacity at current levels following the exhaustion of the existing heap leach in the 2014 calendar year. OLAP is expected to cost US$721 million with commissioning anticipated in the middle of the 2014 calendar year. This project will create 2,500 jobs in the construction phase.
In addition, BHP Billiton announced a 17 per cent increase in the mineral resources and a 25 per cent increase in the ore reserves at Escondida following successful brownfield exploration and accelerated in-fill development drilling programs. BHP Billiton said the reserve increase also reflects the approval of OGP1, as most lower grade sulphide ore is now expected to be treated through the flotation circuit with an associated increase in process recoveries.
A new resource at Chimborazo, based on more than 115,000 metres of drilling averaging 530 metres in depth, was also declared. The resource is being evaluated as potential feed for Escondida’s Sulphide Leach processing facilities.
BHP Billiton Base Metals president, Peter Beaven, said: “We expect the completion of the current Escondida Ore Access and Laguna Seca debottlenecking projects, and a strong recovery in ore grades, to support a substantial recovery in Escondida copper production to over 1.3 million tonnes per annum in the 2015 financial year.
“Looking ahead, the success of our brownfield exploration program suggests there are sufficient resources at Escondida to sustain production at current levels for more than a century. OGP1 is the first of a series of potential projects that could substantially expand processing capacity at Escondida and help ensure it remains the world’s leading copper operation for decades to come.”
