Friday, November 19, 2010

BIG copper: Codelco approves the Hales mine

News this morning is that Chiles' Codelco has finally (after delays that stretch back at least 5 years, cos the thing was supposed to have opened for business back in 2008) approved the U$2Bn or so needed to put the "Hales" copper mine project into production. Here's the official Codelco note on the announcement, here's a Chilean media report just out.

Hales is a big one, with oodles of copper grading an average of 1.18% and due to run an average annual copper output of 163,000mt for at least 13 years of mine life (and as you can guess, probably a lot more than that).

UPDATE: Setty's on the ball with the story, too 

UPDATE 2: I thought this was interesting. After posting here I thought I'd snuffle around and make sure my "should have opened 2008" memory was correct, so went to play on the Googletubes. This report  was found dated 2004 and confirmed that original 2008 date, but also had the capex slated for the project at U$900m. So, in 2004 the mine would have cost $900m to build. Six years later it's estimated at $2.1m to build. Food for thought, mineheads....