The long-awaited Udokan project in Russia's far east is coming on stream at a challenging time.

A state-backed Saudi venture would buy stakes in mining assets worth $15 billion in African countries, which will permit US companies to buy some of the production.

The worker's union had threatened on Thursday to stop work on Saturday, alleging an impasse in negotiation with the directors of Minera Panama.

The purchase price gives Nova a total equity value of C$190 million on a fully-diluted basis.

The negotiation remained stuck on disagreements over profit sharing and salary increase.

The mine started operations in 2007 and produced about 500 million pounds of copper since.

The project would have been one of the biggest US sources of metals needed to build electric vehicle batteries and other clean energy technologies.

Mining represents 7% of the province’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), despite only accounting for 0.04% of the land use.