Ron - Recovered my link tonight. I've been doing a little reading to amuse myself. Dug up a few tidbits on Freeport's operations on Irian Jaya.
In 1936, a young Dutch geologist (gasp) roaming the outback in New Guinea stumbled upon the largest above ground copper deposit ever found (sound familiar?). It was so remote, he said, that it may as well have been "on the moon". fcx.com
The deposit was called the Erstberg.
The Freeport expedition "rediscovered" the deposit in 1960.Freeport signed the cow for the project in 1966. Mine construction began in 1970. In 1972, the first concentrates were shipped. In 1975, underground exploration began on a newly discovered orebody at Erstberg East. The decision to develop the new orebody was made in 1978. In 1981, the underground mine became operational. Additional deposits were found beneath the underground mine in 1985. In 1987, new ore reserve discoveries exceeded production rates, and the project had 100 million tons of reserves. In 1988, several kilometers from Erstberg East, the Grasberg deposit was discovered. Ore reserves were brought to 200 million tons. By 1991, reserves had grown to 483 million tons. At this point, it appears Freeport took a strong interest in developing its own smelters. Reserves had grown to 1.1 billion metric tons by 1994, then to 1.9 billion tons in 1995. fcx.com
In Q4 of 1997, Freeport produced 294 million lbs of copper and 560,000 ounces of gold. In 1997, they added 204.8 million tons of ore to their reserves, representing 5.1 billion recoverable lbs of copper, 9.3 million recoverable ounces of gold, and 22.4 million recoverable ounces of silver. Their total reserves at the begining of 1998 stood at 2.17 billion metric tons of ore averaging 1.2% copper, 1.29g/t gold, and 3.95g/t silver, representing 47.1 billion lbs of copper, 62.8 million ounces of gold, and 138.5 million ounces of silver. fcx.com (requires Adobe Acrobat)
Now, how many "clusters" did you say there were on the Mahakem cow's ;o]
best regards - Tom |
