Freeport Indonesia to process 400,000t of copper concentrate at new smelter
Earlier this month, Freeport obtained an export permit for the rest of the year from the government.
In a recent report, S&P Global Market Intelligence reveals that despite the year-on-year decline in the global exploration budget in 2015, gold’s US$3.94 billion allocation made it the top-explored commodity last year.
The document states that drilling activity in the Canada-U.S. region accounted for 39% of all significant gold results announced between July 1 and September 8, 2015 with a further 29% hosted by the Asia-Pacific region. The latter was also the key contributor for gold in non-gold primary projects in terms of resource value.
Asia-Pacific was also the most valuable gold region, with gold revenues of US$20.22 billion, followed by Africa’s US$16.12 billion.
At the same time, the Africa region had the highest in situ value for reported reserves and resources at primary gold projects, with values totaling US$1.48 trillion. The Canada-U.S. regions reported US$1.26 trillion in reserves.
S&P Global Market Intelligence also found that Latin America accounted for the largest amount of planned and completed capital spending on gold announced from the beginning of 2015 through June 30, 2016, with US$5.58 billion in investments. Canada-U.S. was second with US$5.0 billion, including $1 billion allocated by Barrick Gold Corp. to develop the Goldrush project in Nevada.
