Mining’s old guard needs strong medicine
A new report details subpar investor returns in the mining industry over the last decade, particularly big cap diversified companies which have not adapted to new realities.
mercator.jpg
Mercator Minerals’ wholly-owned Mineral Park mine in Arizona has commenced commercial operation of its newly constructed natural gas turbine generator. The General Electric LM6000PF generator has comfortably passed performance testing and has been generating power at a rate of 40 MW, 3 MW above its stated capacity. The projected operating cost of the turbine using today’s natural gas prices is approximately
33% less than our current power costs on a per kilowatt hour basis.
Bruce McLeod, President and Chief Executive Officer, comments, “With the new generator now online, which was the largest constraint to achieving targeted production levels of 50,000 t/d run-rate, we can now focus our attention on finalising the Phase 2 expansion at Mineral Park.”
Mercator embarked on a two-phase expansion of its Mineral Park operations to a 50,000 t/d copper and molybdenum milling operation which is expected to increase total Mineral Park average annual production over the first ten years of a 25-year mine life to 56 Mlb of copper, 10 Mlb of molybdenum and 0.6 Moz of silver. Mercators Mineral Park Mine expansion is one of the largest, furthest advanced copper-molybdenum expansion projects in North America.
The first phase of the expansion to a 25,000 t/d milling
operation was completed and achieved commercial production in the second
quarter of 2009. Mercator is currently producing copper, molybdenum and silver
in concentrates and copper by SX/EX leach extraction at its wholly-owned
Mineral Park mine located near Kingman.
