Irish central bank makes first reserve gold purchases since 2009

Bloomberg News | December 1, 2021 | 

Central Bank of Ireland. Credit: Wikipedia

The Irish central bank has been adding to its gold reserves as inflation in the euro area runs far ahead of the European Central Bank target.


The Dublin-based institution’s purchase of 2 tons of gold in recent months has ended a more than decade-long period of unchanged holdings of the precious metal.

When asked about the reasoning behind the purchases, a spokesperson said that the central bank’s gold transactions “are commercially sensitive and no further comment can be made at this time.”

While the institution has given no reason for the increase in its stockpile, the Governor Gabriel Makhlouf last week warned that policy makers cannot afford to be complacent on inflation.

Central bankers’ appetite for gold grew in the first half of the year, with global reserves expanding 333.2 tons, 39% higher than the five-year average for the period, according to the World Gold Council, which noted strong purchases by Thailand, Hungary and Brazil.

Singapore increased its gold reserves by about 20% earlier this year in a largely under-the-radar move the central bank says will ensure the resiliency of its portfolio.

(By Lorcan Roche Kelly)

AUSTRALIA

Billionaire Adani’s disputed mine shows ditching coal isn’t easy

Bloomberg News | December 2, 2021 | 

The Carmichael mine has been a lighting rod for climate change concerns in Australia. Image from Adani.

Billionaire Gautam Adani’s coal mine in Australia, a project that’s become a global emblem for opposition to fossil fuels, is preparing to begin exports after more than a decade of bitter dispute over its development.


Proposed in 2010 and stalled by legal challenges, financing setbacks and a sustained campaign from climate activists, the operation is scheduled to ship first cargoes before the end of December and aims to supply an initial 10 million tons of thermal coal annually for at least 30 years.

Opposition to the Carmichael mine, located inland from Australia’s iconic Great Barrier Reef in Queensland state, has spanned environmental activists to Wall Street banks, insurers and investors, offering a microcosm of the escalating international campaign against the most polluting fossil fuel in the past decade.

“Carmichael seems to have catalyzed a broader conversation about the future of thermal coal,” said Samantha Hepburn, a law professor at Melbourne-based Deakin University who has focused on mining and energy issues. “That’s happening not just for activists, but in boardrooms and for investors across the world who want to reduce their exposure to toxic investments.”

Yet the start of overseas sales also reflects coal’s still-pivotal role in the world’s energy mix, a status that led China and India — the top consumers — to dilute efforts to set a global deadline to phase out the fuel at the COP26 climate talks. Demand is rising in parts of Asia, and the remedy from Beijing and New Delhi to recent power shortages was to ramp up coal production.


Exports from Carmichael will be used to supply electricity to India and nations in Southeast Asia, according to Bravus Mining & Resources, an Adani unit in Australia. Analysts expect at least some of the material to be used by the conglomerate’s own power plants, though the company declined to specify details of its customers.

“We have already secured the market for the 10 million tons per annum of coal,” Bravus said in a statement, confirming its export plans are on track. “The coal will be sold at index adjusted pricing,” and all taxes and royalties will be paid locally, according to the company. Seaborne coal prices have swung wildly in recent weeks, plunging from a record high in October and then recovering some of the gains.

The project, which the company self-financed, has been scaled back from initial plans for a A$16 billion ($11 billion) operation that could yield 60 million tons a year. The company also lists more than 100 approvals secured for the development, and has developed conservation strategies including plans to protect the endangered black-throated finch, found in the project area

Australia’s government also argues that local mines like Carmichael could reduce global emissions, as the coal is higher quality and will displace the use of more polluting fuel.

Adani, Asia’s second richest man and the founder of the Adani Group, is facing sharp criticism as his companies seek to add investments in fossil fuels — including coal mines and power plants — even as he heralds a $70 billion campaign to build a world-leading renewable energy giant.

“We are doing all we can to make renewables a viable, affordable alternative to fossil fuels,” Adani told the Bloomberg India Economic Forum last month, lending support to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s goal for the world’s third-biggest polluter to zero out emissions by 2070.

Ending India’s reliance on coal, which accounts for about 70% of electricity generation, is pivotal to that target, and Adani’s opponents point to proposals that could almost double the group’s coal-fired power capacity, and dramatically boost production of the fuel.Play Video

“Adani is trying to walk both sides of the street,” said Tim Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.

The Carmichael project has commanded such wide attention over its initial planned scale, which could’ve created Australia’s largest coal mine, the fact it’ll boost global supply just as nations including the U.S. urge consumers to rapidly phase out the fuel’s use, and over opposition from some Indigenous landowners.

There have also been enduring concerns that the development, which includes a 200-kilometer (124 mile) railroad, could help enable a series of mines in Queensland’s previously untouched Galilee Basin, a coal-rich region about the same size as the U.K.

Though other proposals have made little recent progress, the Galilee Basin could potentially produce as much as 200 million tons a year — about the same as Australia’s existing thermal coal exports. Campaigners describe the prospect of new mines producing those volumes as “an unconscionable carbon bomb.”

The project has even impacted Australia’s politics. A defense of coal jobs by Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s governing coalition allowed it to hold support in Queensland’s mining strongholds in a 2019 national election and retain office. Morrison’s government is now facing criticism over a plan for net zero emissions which predicts coal and gas exports — forecast to deliver earnings of about A$110 billion this fiscal year — can continue beyond 2050.

Debate over the operation has been global. Paris-based Amundi SA sold holdings of State Bank of India’s green bonds because of the institution’s exposure to the mine, and Bank of New York Mellon Corp. said last month it would sever ties with Carmichael. Siemens AG faced street protests in Munich, and was scolded by both BlackRock Inc. and Fridays for Future activists, including Greta Thunberg, over a contract to supply rail signaling equipment for the project.

Lenders including Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd. and Investec Plc specifically ruled out financing the mine, while banks like Goldman Sachs Group Inc. effectively excluded themselves by setting tighter policies on coal.

As Adani makes final preparations to ship initial cargoes, it’s facing new attempted disruptions. In recent days, protesters clambered aboard coal-laden wagons and laid themselves across a railroad that connects Carmichael to an export terminal. Authorities are failing to ensure there are sufficient deterrents to prevent unsafe protests that put lives at risk, Adani’s Abbot Point Operations unit said in a statement.

“It’s people power that’s slowed down Adani’s mine,” campaigner Andy Paine said Tuesday in a video, tethered to a rail with a steel pipe on the outskirts of the town of Bowen. “It’s people power that will save us from climate destruction.”

(By David Stringer and Rajesh Kumar Singh, with assistance from James Thornhill and Jason Scott)

Glencore boss defends coal business after activist push to exit
Bloomberg News | December 2, 2021 | 10:37 am Top Companies Coal

Gary Nagle. (Image courtesy of Glencore | Twitter)

Glencore Plc’s new chief executive officer defended the company’s sprawling coal business after it emerged this week that an activist investor was pushing for an exit from the dirtiest fuel.


Gary Nagle, who stepped into the top job at the end of June, said it was in the best interests of both the company and the planet for Glencore to run down the mines over the next 30 years. The company’s biggest investors agree with the strategy, he said.

Investors and the biggest mining companies have been grappling for years over who should own the world’s coal mines and some of Glencore’s rivals have already gotten out of the business because of pressure from shareholders. But more recently there has been a growing pushback from some climate activists and investors who are worried that the assets would actually produce more coal for longer under new owners.

However, activist hedge fund Bluebell Capital Partners asked Glencore last month to separate its thermal coal business, which it said has become a barrier to investment.

“We believe the rundown strategy is the right one both for our business and the world,” Nagle said Thursday during his first investor day as CEO. “We don’t have any major investors asking us to spin off coal. They are saying the spinoff scenario is the wrong scenario.”

The company is still prepared to exit the business if a majority of its shareholders asked for it, he said.

Glencore is the world’s biggest thermal-coal shipper and its billionaire former boss Ivan Glasenberg — who remains its second-biggest shareholder — has been a firm advocate of the business. Glencore is poised to report record profits for the year and pay bumper dividends, driven in large part by a surge in coal prices.

“We believe the right strategy is keep it and run it down responsibly rather than leaving it to someone who might not be in the public market, to someone pro coal who might want to exploit every ton in the ground,” Nagle said.

Glencore shares dropped as much as 6.3% on Thursday, underperforming other big miners. Investors may have been disappointed that the company failed to provide any more detail about potential shareholder returns, other than saying that the dividend will be “very healthy.”

(By Thomas Biesheuvel)

Astronomers find new clues on the origin of gold
MINING.COM Staff Writer | December 2, 2021 |

Gold. (Reference image by James St. John, Wikimedia Commons).

Using computer simulations, an international research team was able to demonstrate that the synthesis of heavy elements like gold and uranium is typical for certain black holes with orbiting matter accumulations known as accretion disks.


In a paper published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, the scientists explain that such black hole systems are formed both after the merger of two massive neutron stars and during a so-called collapsar, the collapse and subsequent explosion of a rotating star.

The internal composition of the accretion disks has so far not been well understood, particularly with respect to the conditions under which an excess of neutrons forms. A high number of neutrons is a basic requirement for the synthesis of heavy elements, as it enables the rapid neutron-capture process, or r-process. Nearly massless neutrinos play a key role in this process, as they enable the conversion between protons and neutrons.

Sectional view through the simulation of an accretion disk from the study by Oliver Just and his colleagues. 

(Graph courtesy of the GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung)

“In our study, we systematically investigated for the first time the conversion rates of neutrons and protons for a large number of disk configurations by means of elaborate computer simulations, and we found that the disks are very rich in neutrons as long as certain conditions are met,” Oliver Just, lead author is the study and a researcher at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, said in a media statement.

“The decisive factor is the total mass of the disk. The more massive the disk, the more often neutrons are formed from protons through the capture of electrons under emission of neutrinos and are available for the synthesis of heavy elements by means of the r-process.

However, if the mass of the disk is too high, the inverse reaction plays an increased role so that more neutrinos are recaptured by neutrons before they leave the disk. These neutrons are then converted back to protons, which hinders the r-process.”

The study shows that the optimal disk mass for prolific production of heavy elements is about 0.01 to 0.1 solar masses. The result provides strong evidence that neutron star mergers producing accretion disks with these exact masses could be the point of origin for a large fraction of the heavy elements. However, whether and how frequently such accretion disks occur in collapsar systems remains unclear.

Regardless of the current uncertainties, the scientists believe that their findings provide insight into which heavy elements need to be studied in future laboratories to unravel the origin of heavy elements.

The inspiration

The German, Belgian and Japanese researchers behind this study started from the premise that all heavy elements on Earth today were formed under extreme conditions in astrophysical environments: inside stars, in stellar explosions, and during the collision of neutron stars.

Like many other colleagues, they were intrigued by the question in which of these astrophysical events the appropriate conditions for the formation of the heaviest elements, such as gold or uranium, exist.

The spectacular first observation of gravitational waves and electromagnetic radiation originating from a neutron star merger in 2017 suggested that many heavy elements can be produced and released in these cosmic collisions.

However, the question remains open as to when and why the material is ejected and whether there may be other scenarios in which heavy elements can be produced.

But in the group’s view, black holes orbited by accretion disks of dense and hot matter are promising candidates for heavy element production.

Asteroid “ideal for mining exploration” to enter Earth’s orbit next week

Cecilia Jamasmie | December 1, 2021 | 

Asteroid 4660 Nereus will break into Earth’s orbit on December 11. 

(Reference image: iStock/adventtr)

An asteroid as big as a football field that has been singled out by scientists an ideal target for a mining exploration mission, will break into Earth’s orbit on December 11.


While the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as “potentially hazardous” due to its size and how close it will get to our planet’s surface, those features make of asteroid 4660 Nereus an attractive candidate for potential exploration.

As an Apollo-class asteroid, Nereus’ orbit frequently puts it close to Earth. Its orbital resonance is approximately 2:1, meaning that it orbits almost twice for every orbit of the Earth. This makes a mission to explore the asteroid very feasible.

Nereus will come the closest to our planet it has been in the past 20 years, yet it set to pass 7.4 million km away, which is about 10 times the distance between the Moon and Earth.

No missions are currently known to be ready to explore Nereus, however it has been considered before. Both NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous-Shoemaker (NEAR) robotic mission and the Japanese Hayabusa mission looked into Nereus as target, but both eventually chose other options.

According to NASA, if a mission were to be launched this year, it would take anywhere between 426-146 days, though the delta-v this time around would be around 10.37 km/s, slightly higher than launching a rocket into low-orbit.

Asteroid exploration is a major field in astronomy, with space agencies, governments and private companies already involved in studying them as source of water and minerals.

RELATED: Scientists working on autonomous swarms of robots to mine the Moon

Luxembourg, one of the first countries to set its eyes on the possibility of mining celestial bodies, created in 2018 a Space Agency (LSA) to boost exploration and commercial utilization of resources from Near Earth Objects.

Unlike NASA, LSA does not carry out research or launches. Its purpose is to accelerate collaborations between economic project leaders of the space sector, investors and other partners.

Nearly 9,000 asteroids larger than 36 meters (150 feet) in diameter orbit near Earth. Geologists believe they are packed with iron ore, nickel and precious metals at much higher concentrations than those found on Earth, making up a market valued in the trillions of dollars.

Other space ventures in the works include plans to start mining the Moon as early as 2025, track space debris, build the first human settlement on Mars, and billionaire Elon Musk’s own plan for an unmanned mission to the red planet.

Steel’s path to go green will cost industry up to $278 billion
Bloomberg News | November 30, 2021 | 

Stock image.

The world’s steel industry could eliminate its greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 through ramping up recycling, using hydrogen for fuel and capturing carbon from older plants, according to a BloombergNEF study. But getting there won’t be easy.


Steel production generates an estimated 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions and some processes can’t easily run on electricity. Switching to zero-carbon production methods will require the industry to spend $215 billion to $278 billion for capital investments, according to a report by Bloomberg’s energy data and analysis unit. Still, steel made under such a system could ultimately cost less than today’s prices.


“The steel industry has a challenging path to decarbonization: It is heavily reliant on coal, has limited opportunities to increase its share of recycled production due to scrap availability, and will need to wait for hydrogen costs to fall to realize cost-competitive clean production,” BNEF analysts including Julia Attwood wrote in the report.

About 69% of current production is fueled by coal in blast furnaces, according to the report. Given its combination of price and strength, there’s no obvious material replacement for steel required in everything from buildings to automobiles to toasters and medical equipment.

Governments will need to provide support to help the industry transition, and carbon prices or subsidies of up to $145 per ton of carbon dioxide will be needed to incentivize the initial phases of change in the next decade, BNEF said. The industry’s greenhouse gas emissions are equal to about 2.55 billion metric tons of carbon.

“Robust policy is essential to enable decarbonization of the steel industry,” the report said.

Net-zero steel

The report details a pathway for wiping out those emissions. Recycling scrap steel in electric arc furnaces would be greatly increased, with electricity coming from renewable sources. For primary steel production, newly built furnaces would be capable of running on hydrogen stripped from water using renewable power. Steel plants that use coal or gas could start blending hydrogen to help build the market for the fuel and lower its price. Some existing coal-fired plants would be fitted with emission-capturing technology.

By 2050, metal produced by this revamped system would cost less than current prices, according to BNEF. The five-year average price for crude steel stands at $726 per metric ton, while the technologies proposed in the report could make steel for $418 to $598 per ton.

“The technological pathways for the industry to decarbonize are becoming clear, there is growing policy to support decarbonization, customer demand for green steel is emerging,” BNEF said. “We estimate that 27% of steel capacity is already covered by a corporate net-zero target today.”

(By David R. Baker and Joe Deaux)

Peru says IMF sees leeway to hike taxes on mining sector

Reuters | December 2, 2021 

The Yanacocha gold mine in Peru. Credit: Wikipedia

Peru’s finance ministry said on Thursday that International Monetary Fund officials had concluded there is leeway in the country’s tax system for a reform to include higher taxes on the key mining sector.


Peru is the world’s No. 2 copper producer and hiking mining taxes is a cornerstone of socialist President Pedro Castillo’s agenda, in order to use the additional resources to fund social programs.

“The Peruvian tax system is internationally competitive, with a tax burden that is lower or similar to other resource-rich countries,” the finance ministry said about the IMF report.

“In that sense, the (IMF) says that, within that system, there is leeway to increase progressive (taxation),” it added.

The report has not been made public and the IMF has yet to comment on it.

Peru’s finance minister Pedro Francke has asked Congress for executive powers to reform the tax system. Congress has yet to vote on the request, which is mostly focused on the mining sector.

The government, however, has yet to spell out the details of its planned tax hike on the mining sector. Francke said earlier this year that he had enlisted the IMF in a bid to do so in a way that would not hurt competitiveness.

The mining industry has opposed the move, saying that taxes are already high in Peru and that any further increases would harm competitiveness.

(By Marcelo Rochabrun; Editing by Susan Fenton)

CHINCHILLA RESISTANCE FRONT
Chinchillas throw wrench in Gold Fields’ Chile mine expansion plan
Bloomberg News | December 1, 2021 | 

The Salares Norte gold project is located in the Atacama region of northern Chile. (Image courtesy of Gold Fields Chile.)

Gold Fields Ltd.’s flagship $860 million expansion project in Chile has stumbled over a large rodent, whose prized fur saw it hunted to the brink of extinction.


The Johannesburg-based gold miner must come up with a new plan to move more than 20 short-tailed chinchillas from its Salares Norte site after Chile’s environmental agency halted its original relocation program when two out of four animals died. The project in the country’s Atacama region is one of the last wild refuges of the bluish-grey furred rodent.



IN DEPTH: 25 chinchillas stand between Gold Fields and $7bn worth of Chilean gold

The plan, which will be submitted to the environmental authority, will involve relocating the chinchilla colony about 5 kilometers (3 miles) away from the mine to an area where another 100 of the rodents live, Gold Fields said.

Despite the challenges of relocating the endangered chinchillas, Gold Fields said it’s still on track to start producing gold at Salares Norte in early 2023. Output from the mine is key to helping Chief Executive Officer Chris Griffith meet a target of boosting annual output to about 2.8 million ounces.

(By Felix Njini)

Chile election favorite talks up state lithium firm, slams ‘error’ of privatization
Reuters | December 1, 2021 | 

Gabriel Boric. Credit: Department of Public Policy at CEU

Chilean leftist presidential candidate Gabriel Boric, the front-runner in surveys ahead of a Dec. 19 run-off vote, talked up his plans for a state lithium firm on Wednesday and slammed the Andean country’s “historic error” of privatizing its resources.


Chile, which sits on South America’s ‘lithium triangle’, has the world’s largest reserves of the ultra-light battery metal, which is key to the booming development of electric vehicles. Prices are rising amid expectations of hot demand.

Chile, a regional bastion of market-friendly policies and privatization in recent decades, is also the second largest producer behind Australia. Its major mine operators include Albemarle Corp and local player SQM.

“Chile cannot once again make the historic mistake of privatizing resources, and for this we will create the National Lithium Company,” Boric tweeted.

READ ALSO: Chile elections may impact a third of the world’s copper supply

He said the move would help generate jobs and put a “Chilean seal” on the product.

“Lithium is the mineral of the future, used in millions of electronic devices.”

Boric has previously included plans for a state lithium firm in his campaign program, but kept relatively quiet on the topic in the run-up to the first round vote on Nov. 21, where he came a close second.

Boric will face off against far-right rival Jose Antonio Kast in the run-off, with surveys giving the leftist a big lead.

Chile is also the world’s largest producer of copper, and lawmakers are currently debating plans to raise royalty payments for mining firms to bolster state coffers and fund social spending needed to bounce back from the impact of the covid-19 pandemic.

Chile’s state-owned Codelco is the world’s largest producer of copper, though many other private firms also mine copper in Chile.

(By Fabian Cambero; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Kevin Liffey)

MINING IS ECOCIDE

Tailings pond collapse affects world’s highest human settlement

MINING.COM Staff Writer | December 3, 2021 | 

The tailings pond breach damaged the road that connects the districts of Ananea and La Rinconada. (Image by Peru’s National Emergency Operations Center, Twitter).

The collapse of a tailings facility in Peru’s Ananea district has destroyed a segment of the main road that connects the area with the neighbouring La Rinconada district, the highest human settlement in the world located in the southeastern Puno region.


According to local media, the San Antonio mining cooperatives are responsible for the maintenance of the tailings storage facility that collapsed on November 26.

As of Friday, emergency crews had identified 10 families who were affected by the breach and reported that 29 homes had sustained severe damages. Most of the houses in the area are made of corrugated tin sheets. Municipal clean-up crews are working around the clock to remove the slush from those houses and nearby roads.

In a press release, the Puno regional government and the Regional Office for Risk Management and Security said that following the collapse, a broad inspection was carried out and a number of tailings ponds that were built on the district’s highlands by the local mining cooperatives were identified. They said that such artificial lakes pose a great risk for the people of Ananea.

“To this emergency, we have to add the clogging of the Ananea riverbed and the damages caused to the drinking water catchment area. These situations combined pose imminent dangers to the population,” the statement reads. “We also noticed that mineral exploitation is taking place in a disorderly manner and we are documenting all of this in a report.”

Besides the clean-up crews, machinery from the gold mining cooperatives is being used to fix the road and rechannel the Ananea river.

“No deaths are reported but the damage is extensive and the release heavily contaminated with arsenic and cyanide,” Lindsay Newland Bowker, executive director of World Mine Tailings Failures, said in a media statement. “This is the 13th of 16 expected catastrophic failures for this decade 2015-2024.”

Newland Bowker pointed out that Peru is on WMTF’s high-risk profile list of nations along with Brazil, Angola, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Congo, Philippines, PNG, Mexico, Myanmar, India, Poland and Serbia.

“All but two of 13 documented catastrophic failures since 2015 have been in these nations,” she said. “We expect that the overwhelming majority of catastrophic failures will also be in these nations with actuarially very high ratios of catastrophic failures to mineral production.”

MINING IS UNSUSTAINABLE
As Freeport converts mining trucks to green power, costs unclear
Reuters | December 2, 2021 |

Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson (Image: Screenshot from Bloomberg TV Video)

Copper mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Inc is converting its fleet of diesel trucks and other machinery to electric or hydrogen power, a transition required to fight climate change even though the costs are not yet known, Chief Executive Richard Adkerson said in an interview at the Reuters Next conference.


The mining industry is grappling with its paradoxical role as supplier of copper, lithium and other building blocks for renewable technologies even as operations contribute to global warming.

Freeport, which operates mines in the Americas and Indonesia, has roughly 600 haul trucks – some of which move more than 400 tonnes (881,850 pounds) of dirt per load – and numerous other pieces of equipment.

To power those machines, Freeport bought 180 million gallons of diesel last year, according to regulatory filings, contributing to its so-called scope one (direct) emissions.

“We have to make investments to reduce carbon emissions,” Adkerson said in the interview released Wednesday. “We’re going to do that. It’s going to cost some money.”

The Phoenix, Arizona-based company is testing electric- and hydrogen-powered trucks and is studying other fuel sources for its coal-fired powered power plant in Indonesia, where it runs the world’s second-largest copper mine.
Joint efforts

Freeport is also participating in the Charge on Innovation Challenge with Rio Tinto Ltd, BHP Group Ltd and others to help better electrify mine sites.

It joined hydrogen fuel consortiums in South America and next year plans trial runs of diesel-electric trucks from Komatsu Ltd and Caterpillar Inc.

Energy accounts for roughly 20% of Freeport’s annual operational costs, though it is not clear yet how that could change once the entire fleet is converted, the company said.

“There will be an impact on supply as a result of converting all of this,” said Adkerson. “There are more questions than answers right now.”

But Adkerson, who has been CEO since 2003, said it was “absolutely necessary” for Freeport to curtail emissions. He cited extreme weather caused by global warming and the incongruity of copper mining creating emissions while the metal is needed for green energy solutions

“The world is going to need copper, and yet copper mining has emissions,” he said.
Net zero emissions by 2050

The International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM), an industry trade group chaired by Adkerson, set a goal in October for all members – including Freeport – of net zero direct and indirect carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner, in part by retiring diesel-powered equipment.

Freeport is also studying ways to re-process waste rock at its mine sites to extract an estimated 10 billion pounds or more of copper. Adkerson said it is too soon to say how much copper could eventually be produced using this method, but added: “Our technical team is really excited about it.”

In Spain, Freeport is recycling electronic scrap waste at one of its smelters. The operation is not expected to become a major focus for the company, which prefers to focus on operating large mines, Adkerson said.

“That (copper) scrap will be needed because of what I believe is the coming real scarcity of copper,” he said. “We just don’t see (recycling) as a business opportunity for Freeport.”

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)