Copper: Humanity’s first and most important future metal
Millions of feet of copper wiring will be required for strengthening the world’s power grids, and hundreds of thousands of tonnes more are needed to build wind and solar farms.
Nick Holland of CEO Gold Fields said on Monday the company was looking to acquire 100% of a second gold-copper project in the Philippines.
The globe’s fourth-largest gold miner has a $63 million option on the Guinaoang deposit that can be exercised until early next year.
The comments follow Johannesburg-based Gold Fields’ announcement last week that it has exercised an option to buy a 40% shareholding in another copper-gold project in the Asian archipelago.
The Far Southeast property was likened by Holland to Wafi-Golpu, a massive project being developed by Harmony and Newcrest in Papua New Guinea. Guinaoang is 4 kilometres from Far Southeast and the deposits have similar mineralization.
Reuters reports “last year Gold Fields spent $1 billion on acquiring the minority interests in mines it already owned and operated. This saw it take 100 percent ownership of its mines in Peru and Ghana.”
Separately Holland said Gold Field’s drilling operations in Mali, where a bloodless military coup took place last week, has been temporarily suspended. Mali is no.3 in Africa for gold output.
Bloomberg reported in February that the Philippines is looking at a major revamp of its mining sector that could include reviewing resource contracts, tightening rules and cutting tax breaks.
2 Comments
LAURA KEY
After mining…. can the companies put the land back they way they found it?
Terry_alferez
well, as expected..mining industry in the philippines is heading for a rough sailing. investment wise, the government must be careful in revamping rules on the new mining law, as it is the present mining law is very competitive and one in the world to be at par with others as to social and environmental parameters. what really taints this sector is the political factors that goes with the processing of a legitimate applications.