Antofagasta plc announced on March 27,
2013, that Minera Antucoya, owned 70%
by Antofagasta and 30% by Marubeni, will
resume development of its Antucoya copper
project in Chile’s Antofagasta region. The
decision followed completion of a full review
of the project announced in December
2012, when project development was tem-porarily suspended. The review included
renegotiation of principal construction con-tracts, additional detailed engineering, and
an updated resource model following further
drilling of the deposit.
Development costs for the Antucoya
project now are expected to total $1.9 bil-lion, of which $0.5 billion had been spent
when development was suspended in
December. Operations are expected to
begin during 2015, with production fore-cast to average 85,000 mt/y of copper
cathodes over the first 10 years of the
mine’s life.
As featured in Womp 2013 Vol 05 - www.womp-int.com