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As the world’s major copper mining companies grapple with a range of limiting factors and new projects slow to gain traction, more focused projects using technology and cost-saving mining methods might just be what the copper sector needs to calm fears of a looming supply deficit.
What is required are copper mining companies geared to produce decent volumes of by-products that will become essential in the world’s energy transitions, and that can optimize existing technology to increase production.
Wood Mackenzie estimates that 9.7 million tonnes of new copper supply will be needed over the next 10 years from projects that have yet to be developed. The world will be called on to close an “unattainable gap” between green energy demand and copper supply,” the global research and consultancy group says in a recent article.
What the world needs, in other words, are new copper projects in stable mining jurisdictions that can be brought online promptly.
The CuMo Project is set to have its pre-feasibility study begin next year, immediately followed by a bankable feasibility study, and a target of producing copper, molybdenum, and silver during this decade.
Idaho’s advanced CuMo project
Furthermore, with a long history of exploration drilling in the area, the US-based outfit is ready to advance the development stages toward production. Idaho Copper and its predecessors have spent more than USD$50-million on exploration programs since the 1990s to advance the project to a level where it can be regarded as an advanced exploration play.
The company has drilled and defined only 60% of the deposit and proven up a resource in the measured and indicated category, with infill, expansion, and geotechnical drilling to follow.
Currently, there are almost 4 billion pounds of copper, 1.4 billion pounds of molybdenum, and several hundred million ounces of silver in the measured and indicated resources category.
The CuMo deposit is contained in a confined area considering the large resource in the ground. Moreover, the ore body is shallow and therefore lends itself to open-pit mining in the initial stages. This means that development and production will happen sooner compared to underground mining methods.
Ore sorting to make mining more efficient and reduce capital and operating costs
Compared to other multinational mega projects, Idaho Copper’s distinct advantage is its ability to utilize ore sorting, to focus on extracting the copper as effectively and efficiently as possible, minimize waste, and optimize its mining methods and processing abilities as much as possible.
Idaho Copper plans to use ore sorting to make the project even more economically robust. The CuMo Project lends itself to ore sorting, and although it is referred to as a copper porphyry, it is really a thin-vein system, referred to by miners and geologists as a stock-work system.
In a thin-vein system, the metals are dispersed in a regular fashion throughout the rock in a network of veins, which are clearly visible in the core samples. These veins are extremely thin and contain up to 90% of all the metals in the deposits. This makes it easier for the mining team to separate the waste from the ore.
CuMo is currently investigating the use of bucket-level ore sorting at the mining face. The system has sensors fixed in the bucket of the shovel or front-end loader that is used to load the haul trucks with material from the pit after a blast.
These bucket sensors can distinguish between waste and ore, and also potentially between higher-grade and lower-grade ore. The mining company can enter its own economic parameters to determine the cut-off between waste and ore, which allows the mining team to make more selective decisions about the material they want to process and send to the concentrator, and which material will be sent to waste impoundments or stockpiled.
Sorting the blasted material at the face of the pit will improve ore processing and reduce operational costs significantly. It will also cut upfront capital expenditure by a large percentage, as less material needs to be processed to produce the same amount of finished metal products.
Ultimately, this allows the mine to reduce the size of the mill/concentrator and as a result, spend a lot less capital. At the same time, the head grade of the ore sent to the concentrator is improved dramatically by a factor of about 9 to 10.
Ore sorting as described above is a proven technology and is used in about 100 or more copper mines around the world.
CuMo joins list of major undeveloped US copper projects
Idaho Copper, being located in the United States, will join a long list of large copper mines of which many are still in production. It will, furthermore, as an undeveloped copper project, join the likes of Northern Dynasty Mineral’s Pebble Project and Rio Tinto/BHP’s Resolution project, the two largest undeveloped copper projects in the world.
Northern Dynasty’s Pebble project, the largest undeveloped copper-gold project in the world, is located near the Bristol Bay region of Alaska and hosts a monstrous 37.18 million tonnes of contained copper. The Pebble Project has been hampered by delays and environmental concerns regarding salmon spawning grounds and has faced stiff opposition from environmental groups, local communities, the government, and the fishing and wildlife industries. Pebble’s fate hangs in the balance following the Biden administration’s proposed ban on waste disposal in the project area. Pebble is in the Preliminary Economic Assessment phase.
The USA’s second largest undeveloped copper project, Rio Tinto and BHP’s jointly owned Resolution copper project in Arizona has been hamstrung by similar controversy and faces continued push-back from Indian tribes, local communities, and environmentalists. Resolution sits on a resource of more than 27.27 million tonnes of copper, but for 26 years, the world’s top mining giants have spent more than USD$2-billion to get the project up and running.
To Idaho Copper’s best current knowledge, the CuMo project does not suffer to any similar degree the same types of opposition as those encountered at Pebble and Resolution. Although the environmental community has weighed in negatively in the past on CuMo, this is to be expected as NGOs make it their business to oppose all mining development in the US, regardless of location or issues involved. But in the case of CuMo, Idaho Copper does not believe that there exist any of the same types of concerns such as the destruction of Native American cultural and religious areas (Resolution) or salmon habitat (Pebble).
The US is a stable jurisdiction for mining
The USA has a long history of copper production. Copper was mined in Michigan, even before Europeans arrived. Huge deposits in places like Butte, Montana, Bingham, Utah, Yerington, Nevada (which is reopening), and Morenci, Arizona helped drive the electrification of the country. Many of these mines have since closed, but the American Southwest still produces a lot of copper.
Compared to other countries in the world, the US has one of the most stable mining jurisdictions. Considering that most of the other undeveloped copper projects in the world are being plagued by a range of problems that are holding back the production of copper, investing in more focused, American mines is likely the answer.
For now, the copper supply chain of tomorrow looks wobbly and beset by geopolitical risks, political and economic instability, and social and environmental resistance. Apart from the first three top undeveloped mining projects in the world, the next seven are all located in volatile mining jurisdictions.
Barrick Gold Corporation’s massive Reko Diq deposit in Pakistan now takes over the No. 4 spot after Barrick resolved a long-running dispute with its Pakistani partners last year.
Reko Diq is followed by Rio Tinto’s La Granja in Peru as the fifth largest undeveloped copper project in the world, Southern Copper’s El Arco (6th) in Mexico, Vale and ANTAM’s Hu’u/Onto in Indonesia, Newmont and Teck’s Nueva in Chile, Glencore’s El Pachon in Argentina and Sagittarius’s Tampakan in the Philippines.
According to the International Copper Study Group, copper mine production is expected to increase by 3 percent in 2023, down from the group’s 5 percent growth projection this past October. According to the organization, this decrease is due to “operational and geotechnical issues, equipment failure, adverse weather, landslides, revised company guidance in a few countries, and community actions in Peru.”
Against this backdrop of slower-than-expected copper supply growth and a strong need to deploy large-scale copper projects in stable jurisdictions devoid of geopolitical risks, Idaho Copper offers a very compelling opportunity.
