Australian-based North Broken Hill Peko is considering bidding to develop Chile’s huge El Abra copper deposit.
The announcement came two weeks after Australia’s biggest company, BHP, said it was considering making a bid for El Abra in tandem with American copper producer Magma Copper (NYSE). (BHP operates the Escondida copper mine in Chile.)
North BH said it had joined forces for its bid with Chilean copper group Sociedad Minera Pudahuel but would take the majority share of the project if the team did win the tender.
The Chilean state mining company Codelco said it would maintain a significant interest in the project but that its stake would be less than half. Codelco believes a mine at El Abra could produce about 150,000 tonnes of copper annually through exploitation of low-cost oxide leaching and solvent extraction-electrowinning.
The deposit, a low-grade oxide and sulphide copper resource, lies 3,500-4,000 metres below the Atacama desert.
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