Don’t pressure Xstrata on benefits, villagers told

A VILLAGE leader from the Frieda River copper project area has called on the affected communities not to make too many unnecessary demands on the developer, Xstrata Copper Ltd.
John Mukas from Ambunti in East Sepik province made the call after the company announced that it would delay the project feasibility study by a year.
Mukas said it appeared that the company was not in a hurry to progress the project because the feasibility study, which was supposed to be ready in January, had now been delayed by 11 months.
He said Xstrata also had bigger mines in South America, which were less costly to develop than Frieda as it had no road access and the area was very remote.
“If we make too many demands on the company, it could easily walk out on us,” Mukas said, adding “because there were other projects that Xstrata could work on easily instead of putting up with landowner demands in PNG.
The National was unable to contact Xstrata’s office in Brisbane for a comment.
Last Friday,  Xstrata announced significant increases to total mineral deposits at the Las Bambas and Corroccohuayco projects in southern Peru and at El Pachón in Argentina.
The miner has ongoing focused exploration and mineral resource expansion programmes in South America.
This year, Xstrata Copper’s total copper resource had grown by 10%, the equivalent of nine million tonnes to 97 million tonnes, including operations in North Queensland, Argentina, Chile, Peru and Canada and major development projects in Peru, Chile, Argentina, the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.
El Pachón’s mineral resource estimate had increased by 53% to a total of 2.740 billion tonnes at a grade of 0.48% copper, using a cut off grade of 0.2% copper.
This represented 13.1 million tonnes of contained copper metal, 44% increase compared to the previous mineral resource issued 1 October 2010.
The new estimate was the result of the largest 2010-11 summer-season drilling programme in the project’s history in which 56,000m of infill and step out drilling were completed as part of the project’s final feasibility study.
The Las Bambas project mineral resource estimate had increased to 1.710 billion tonnes at a grade of 0.60% copper, using a 0.2% copper cut off grade, an increase of 10% compared to the previous mineral resource estimate in October last year. Contained copper metal in resource has risen by 9% to 10.3 million tonnes.
Xstrata Copper will continue exploration and resource definition drilling programmes in this mineral district.
Coroccohuayco is an earlier stage project located 9km from Xstrata’s Tintaya Antapaccay operation.
The Antapaccay expansion to Tintaya, comprising an open pit mine and a new large scale copper concentrator, was on track for commissioning in the second half of next year with initial annual production of 160,000 tonnes of copper.
The Corroccohuayco deposit was being evaluated as a potential open pit satellite mine to expand production further at Tintaya Antapaccay.
As a result of further drilling that identified resources closer to the surface, the new Coroccohuayco project mineral resource has risen by 250% to 324 million tonnes at a grade of 0.93% copper.