BHP has offer workers a signing on bonus of $27,000, up from an earlier offer of $23,000, plus a 1.5% salary increase, but still well under the bonus up to $43,000 and 5% increase demanded by Escondida’s union.
The Canadian streaming firm has bought all of Stillwater's gold production for the life of the mine and, initially, also 4.5% of its total palladium output.
Production in the second-quarter of the year jumped 6.1% to 163,200 tonnes, as higher output at its Centinela and Antucoya mines mitigated declines at Los Pelambres and Zaldívar.
The expansion, on top of a $238 million upgrade due for completion in April, will double the mine’s production to 1.95 million tonnes a year of lithium concentrate a year from 2020.
The ongoing trade war between the United States and China has forced the Chilean Copper Commission (Cochilco) to revise downwards its average copper price prediction by $0.06 per pound to $3.
Companies can now perform non-systematic drilling during the early exploration phase of their mining concessions and without requiring an environmental license.
Study released Tuesday by the Fraser Institute, British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec are the three main provinces where exploration permit processes have grown longer and less transparent over the past 10 years.