The Tethyan Copper Company (TCC), a joint venture of copper and gold mining companies, Chilean Antofagasta and Canadian Barrick Gold has approached the federal government to play its role in the conversion of its exploration license into a mining license from the Government of Balochistan.
An official source said that a delegation of the company met with the Petroleum Minister Dr. Asim Hussain, seeking intervention of the federal government to resolve the issues hindering the conversion of its exploration license into a mining license. The minister assured the delegation that he would talk to the Balochistan Chief Minister; however he said that the final decision would be made by the provincial government.
TCC representatives said that they were ready to offer 25 per cent share of the project to the Government of Balochistan. They said that the mining gestation period was more than 50 years and in the initial 9 years, they would be making payment of $25 million per annum in royalties while in the next 35 years they would pay royalties of $115 million per annum to the province.
The source said that the company would be investing close to $1 billion in the mining project. The company plans to lay a pipeline from the project site to the Gwadar port to transport the concentrate, as they said that the setting up of a smeltering plant was not financially feasible. He said the company was not interested to take the concentrate to its smeltering plant in Chile as it plans to auction the concentrate to higher bidders at the Gwadar port.
The company has an exploration license for Reko Diq copper coal deposits in district Chagai of Balochistan. The mineral resource at Reko Diq is estimated at 5.9 billion tonnes. From this resource, an estimated 2.2 billion tonnes of economically mineable ore, with an average copper grade of 0.5 per cent and an average gold grade of 0.3 grams per tonne will be processed to produce 2.2 billion pounds of copper (10 million tonnes) and 13 million ounces of gold in form of payable metal in about 56 years of mine life. The company has already invested over $220 million into the project since 2006.
