{"id":1110961,"date":"2019-04-15T10:51:32","date_gmt":"2019-04-15T10:51:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mining.com\/?p=982145"},"modified":"2019-04-15T10:51:32","modified_gmt":"2019-04-15T10:51:32","slug":"rio-tinto-injects-another-302m-into-resolution-copper-project-in-arizona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=1110961","title":{"rendered":"Rio Tinto injects another $302m into Resolution copper project in Arizona"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rio Tinto (ASX, LON:RIO), the world\u2019s second largest miner, will invest a further $302 million<\/a> to advance its Resolution copper project, in the U.S. state of Arizona, as part of its drive to increase its exposure to the red metal<\/a>, used in everything from electric vehicles to batteries.<\/p>\n

The extra financing brings the total injected by Rio, which owns a 55% interest in the project, and its Resolution partner BHP (ASX, NYSE: BHP), which owns the remaining 45% interest, to \u00a0over $2 billion since 2004.<\/p>\n

The funds will be used bank-roll additional drilling, ore-body studies, infrastructure improvements and permitting activities needed to advance the project to the final stage of the permitting phase, Rio said in the statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Electric vehicles, battery storage, new transmission technology and other green energy innovations are highly copper intensive and Rio wants to be prepared to meet the upcoming demand.<\/q><\/p>\n

\u201cResolution is one of the most significant undeveloped copper deposits in the world and this additional funding demonstrates Rio Tinto’s commitment to bring the mine into production,” chief executive Jean-S\u00e9bastien Jacques said.<\/p>\n

Electric vehicles, battery storage, new transmission technology and other green energy innovations are highly copper intensive and the company wants to be prepared to meet that demand.<\/p>\n

\u201cResolution is one of the most significant undeveloped copper deposits in the world\u00a0[and it] will be well positioned to provide North American manufacturers the copper that is essential to their products,\u201d Jacques said.<\/p>\n

Resolution has an indicated and inferred resource of 1.78 billion tonnes at 1.53% copper. Once in production, which is unlikely to happen before 2030, the mine expected to supply almost a quarter of US demand for the metal for 40 years.<\/p>\n

Rio has said it\u2019s studying ways to open Resolution sooner<\/a> \u2014 about a year or two \u2014 by making engineering changes, but nothing has been finalized.<\/p>\n

The project sits on U.S. federal land, which makes its development more complicated than those that are on private land.<\/p>\n

The U.S. Forest Service is expected to post a draft environmental study on the project by this summer, after which American Indian groups and others will be able to give feedback.<\/p>\n

Not all eggs in one basket<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Rio\u00a0is advancing several other copper projects, such as Winu<\/a>, the Citadel project with Antipa Minerals<\/a>\u00a0(ASX:AZY) in Western Australia, and Berenguela,\u00a0in south-eastern Peru. It has also applied for exploration permits in northern Chile<\/a>, the world\u2019s top copper producing nation.<\/p>\n

Analysts have questioned Rio\u2019s ability to scale up its copper business quickly, without making an expensive acquisition. The company recently had to\u00a0delay first production<\/a>\u00a0from the $5.3 billion underground expansion of its Oyu Tolgoi copper-gold-silver mine in Mongolia. Originally scheduled for early 2020, it’s now expected to happen in the third quarter of 2021.<\/p>\n

In December, Rio sold\u00a0its entire interest in the\u00a0Grasberg\u00a0mine<\/a>\u00a0in Indonesia, the world\u2019s second-biggest copper mine, as part of a deal that put an end to\u00a0years of disagreements<\/a>\u00a0between operator Freeport McMoRan (NYSE:FCX) and the country\u2019s government.<\/p>\n

The company believes the copper market\u00a0will go into deficit by 2020<\/a>\u00a0as it faces declining\u00a0supplies and increasing demand coming from the electric vehicles sector, infrastructure and renewable technologies.<\/p>\n

The post Rio Tinto injects another $302m into Resolution copper project in Arizona<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Investment will go towards more drilling, orebody studies, infrastructure improvements and permitting activities. <\/p>\n

The post Rio Tinto injects another $302m into Resolution copper project in Arizona<\/a> appeared first on MINING.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[700,404,369,1732,510,440],"tags":[15,28,33,71,78,86],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1110961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1110962,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110961\/revisions\/1110962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1110961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1110961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1110961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}