Reuters reports Romania has launched the sale of its biggest copper mine Cupru Min SA Abrud via a tender, the government’s industry privatisation office said on its website. The deadline for bids is Jan. 17 2012. Romania wants to sell 100% of the mine which sits on about 60% of the European Union member’s copper reserves equal to roughly 900,000 tonnes.
Cupru Min is based in Abrud, Alba County, Romania and operates the Roşia Poieni copper mine. The company says deposits amount to more than 1 billion tons with an average of 0.36% Cu and 1.8% S. Copper production began in 1983 and the designed capacity of the mine is 9 million tons of ore extracted and processed per year with expansion to 15 million tons per year.
Image is courtesy of Cupru Min
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3 Comments
ST
Misleading title – 60% of Europe’s copper reserves? the detail in your article and Reuters says 60% of the European member’s reserves, not Europe’s
ImJustSaying
There is much metals in the balkan states. Question is do you have to kiss sand and moon pigeons in honor of a guy that rides horses into the moon or eat the body of a jewish zombie in order to bid for the right to have slaves do the work and global merchants to get rich whilst extracting it.
magmahombre999
Frik: Do the math. 1Bt at 0.36% Cu = 3.6Mt contained Cu, not 900,000 tonnes. Don’t depend on a government to do the math for you. Maybe there is a story in the difference. Maybe a big white lie. In any case, it is highly unlikely that the stated resource i NI43-101, JORC, or SEC Rule 7 compliant. In any case, the other significant copper deposits in Romania are 1) Lacobeni (200 Mt at 0.4% Cu and Moldova Nova (250 Mt at 0.48% Cu),
for a contained Cu content of 2Mt, Ciresata (107.73 Mt at 0.16% Cu (+Au) – 0.1724 Mt contained Cu, so Rosi Poeini has 62.4% of Romania’s currently defined copper resources if the 3.6Mt contained Cu is correct. Then there is the Cu-Au porphyry at Bucium Tarnita for which I have no resource numbers. It is interesting that in 2005 the stated reserves for Rosia Poeini were 350 Mt at 0.36% Cu, 0.29 g/t Au. Has there been sufficient addtional drilling to expand the resource to 1Bt at 0.36% Cu – exactly the same grade??
Anyway while 3.6 Mt of contained Cu represents ta significant deposit, it is not anywhere near world class (>10 Mt contained Cu and a 9Mt/yr OP mining operation on a porphyry Cu deposit is really quite small and likely high cost. If the resource really is 1Bt then the operation can be modernized and expanded to a significantly higher production rate – say 30Mt/yr processing capacity. This will likely cost big $, approximately $1.5 to 2.0B which is probably money the Romanian government run company or government doesn’t have. For such an expansion most of the existing equipment just represents scrap metal, which leaves you with a big hole in the ground and a development project.