The biggest news during the report period ended Oct. 14 was a major rockfall at Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold‘s 90.6%-owned Grasberg open-pit mine in Indonesia. Two employees are known to be dead, six are missing, and another five were in need of medical treatment. The company is still mining underground and in areas of the open pit unaffected by the slippage, and is operating its mill. Freeport estimates that some of its fourth-quarter sales volumes will be deferred to 2004, but it won’t exceed 10% of the entire operation’s 2003 projected annual volumes of 1.4 billion lbs. copper and 2.6 million oz. gold. Surprisingly, Freeport ended the week up 80 at US$37.14 on heavy trading.
On the other side of the island, South African gold miner Durban Roodepoort Deep reached an agreement with Australia’s Oil Search Ltd. to acquire the latter’s 20% interest in the 760,000-oz.-per-year Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea, where Placer Dome is 75% owner and operator. DRD will pay US$52.7 million in cash and US$21.1 million in DRD shares, and can elect to pay part or all of the equity component in cash at a 10% discount to the value of the scrip. DRD rose a nickel to US$2.79 while Placer jumped 54 to US$14.04 on the big board.
Harmony Gold has dealt its 31.7% interest in London-listed Russian gold miner Highland Gold to Barrick Gold and a group of institutional investors. Barrick picked up a 10% stake for US$43 million, with Highland agreeing to issue the major another 29.6 million shares to bring Barrick’s stake to 29%. Harmony rose 29 to US$14.03, while Barrick was up only 13 to US$18.80 in New York.
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