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Mining projects forge ahead despite copper price plunge

Last time we here at The Footprint checked in on Rosemont Copper, and their bid to build a vast open-pit copper mine in the heart of the Santa Rita mountains south of Tucson, the project was riding high on record copper prices and a flood of investment capital into the mining industry.

What a difference a few months makes.

The price of copper has been absolutely clobbered since the onset of the financial crisis in September, falling almost 60 percent from its high of $4 per pound this summer.

What does that mean for projects like Rosemont? Well, it depends who you ask.

Jan Howard, spokeswoman for Rosemont Copper, says that the original feasibility study for the mine, completed in July 2007, calculated that the mine would be profitable with copper at $1.50 per pound.

When copper prices were hovering around $3.50 per pound, that seemed almost extravagantly conservative. But with copper trading at about $1.65 on Wednesday, you can bet that Augusta Resouces (the Canadian mineral exploration firm behind the project) executives are definitely starting to sweat.

Nevertheless, they appear to be keeping their game faces on.

“I think that this is a very viable project,” says spokeswoman Howard. “I’m not going to speculate further.”

Yesterday I also had the chance to talk with Madan Singh, the director of the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources, who says that Rosemont Copper will probably forge ahead with the mine.

“Rosemont is still 2 or 3 years away from starting. In a few years, the price of copper may be entirely different than it is right now,” he says. “Unless they run into some liquidity problems, I don’t think they will be affected very much by the price of copper at this point.”

Liquidity problems? Who’s having liquidity problems now? Oh yeah,everyone.

Meanwhile, the AZ Daily Star reports that an even bigger project — the proposed Resolution Copper mine, near Superior, is running into some money problems.

Via StarNet:

Funding for a controversial underground copper mine being developed near Superior has been temporarily slashed by the majority stakeholder in the project.

British miner Rio Tinto PLC has cut funding for the project, which is being directed by Resolution Copper Co. David Salisbury, Resolution’s president, said Tuesday that the company’s 2009 budget has been cut by about two-thirds and that an undetermined number of contract workers will be laid off.

“The whole global-finance issue is impacting us,” Salisbury said.

Chinese demand driving Arizona copper boom

Copper prices have been pretty much slaughtered in recent weeks, what with the economic apocalypse underway on Wall Street and around the world. The price for a pound of the red metal fell as low as $2.07 a pound last week, down from a high of more than $4 just a few months ago.

Still, even with a recession pretty much guaranteed in the United States, industry analysts feel that demand for copper may just tough it out. That’s because of continued demand in the developing world, which needs massive amounts of copper for things like power transmission and building construction.

That’s good news for the mining industry, but perhaps not for the rest of us. The extraction of copper and other metals is incredibly taxing on the environment — sucking up vast quantities of water, and requiring huge inputs of electricity and fossil fuels.

But beyond that is how that copper is put to use around the world. The picture above, taken from the top of the Shanghai World Trade Center, just about says it all. With China responsible for about 20 percent of global copper consumption in the last few years, you can pretty much bet that there’s quite a bit of Arizona copper in the works of that dystopic cityscape.

For more photos from China and other environmentally stressed places, the Washington Post has a great photo slideshow called Eye on the Earth. Check it out.

John Collins Rudolf

(photo credit: Nir Elias-Reuters)

State jobs picture grim, but mines are hiring

Want a job? You might want to consider working in an open-pit copper mine.

A new report by the Arizona Department of Commerce estimates that between 2008 and 2009, the state will lose about 50,000 jobs — almost 2 percent of its total non-farm employment.

One of the few bright spots — if you can call it that — is the natural resources and mining industries. They’re going like gangbusters, with a projected growth of 14 percent this year, and 7.1 percent the next.

The copper industry is even hotter, with employment up 25 percent this year, according to the Arizona Mining Association.

While that might sound like a lot of new jobs, it really isn’t: all told, the copper industry only employs about 10,000 people in the state. Nevertheless, since many of those 10,000 folks are operating really, really, really big shovels, trucks and other machines, they are tearing stuff up like never before.

John Collins Rudolf

Copper mine west of Tucson poised for restart

According to this Reuters story, yet another copper mine in Arizona is poised to go back into production.

Nord Resources Corp. is gearing up operations at the Johnson Camp Mine, about 65 miles west of Tucson, an open-pit heap-leach operation that closed in 2003 due to low copper prices.

Nord secured an air-quality permit from the Arizona Dept. of Environmental Quality last month that was the company’s last hurdle to clear before reopening the mine.

The company’s CEO told Reuters that the mine’s full production could reach 25 million pounds of copper by spring 2009.

With new mines popping up and old mines like Johnson Camp returning to production, it’s pretty clear that Arizona’s copper industry is hot. But with copper prices tied closely to global economic conditions, is the industry poised for a fall?

Only time will tell.

John Collins Rudolf

Rosemont mine will destroy Hohokam ruins, archeologist says

The proposed Rosemont copper mine has been the focus of a huge amount of attention in the Tucson area, but one issue has largely evaded public concern so far: the impact of the mining operation on ancient Hohokam archeological sites in the area.

(I explored the Rosemont issue in depth a few weeks ago in this Zonie Report story.)

The site of the mine contains the ruins of a Hohokam ball field and a large village, says Gayle Hartmann, an archeologist with the Arizona State Museum in Tucson.

The earliest ruins on the property date back almost 1,900 years.

“There’s lots of reasons why this mine shouldn’t be there, and this is certainly one of them,” she says.

The ballcourt and village were initially excavated about 20 years ago during a previous mining company’s exploration of the area.

“It was a large Hohokam village, and it did have a ballcourt,” Hartmann says of the site. “There are not a huge amount of ballcourts in the Tucson area. To have a ballcourt, you had to be a village of some prominence.”

While the ballcourt ruins are not unique, many others have already been destroyed by development.

“It’s not unique, but many of them are gone. They get destroyed,” she says. “From my point of view, this is one more value that we will lose if this mining operation goes through.”

While state law requires that archeological sites be investigated and documented, once the investigation is complete, development projects like the proposed mine can continue, even if they destroy the site in the process.

The Rosemont mine plan of operations devotes only a few paragraphs to the issue of archeological sites.

“The Rosemont Project area has a ranching and mining past, and many relics of these enterprises remain. In addition, evidence from past archaeological surveys indicates that prehistoric sites are present as well,” the plan reads. “Rosemont Project planning has included efforts to reduce the overall footprint of the project to the minimum possible area, thereby avoiding cultural resources to the extent practicable.”

Hartmann estimates that the archeological work will cost the company a minimum of $1 million, and that local tribal representatives will have to be involved.

“In this case, the odds are that the Apache, Zuni and Yaqui will have to be consulted with before anything can go ahead,” she says.

The process could drag out the mine’s development as sites are catalogued and any remains are properly turned over to tribal representatives.

Hartmann, who strongly opposes the mine, says that while the cost of mitigating archeological concerns for the mine site may be pocket change to Rosemont, the time and expense is just one more headache for the company to deal with.

“I think they were naïve when they bought the property. They’re trying to make the public think that everything is hunky-dory,” she says. “They’re beginning to become aware that there is an awful lot that they will have to do before they ever get a mining permit, and mitigating the archeology would be one of them.”

JCR

Rosemont mine rich in copper, poor in public support

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NEAR THE SANTA RITA MOUNTAINS — This clearing, at an elevation of more than 5,000 feet and just below the peaks of the northern Santa Rita Mountains, provides a spectacular view of the rolling hills of grassland and oak that stretch across the valley floor below.

In spite of the beautiful views, it is not the seen but the unseen – specifically, the rich copper ore buried underground – that has made this wilderness area 30 miles south of Tucson the focus of extraordinary public interest.

In June, Rosemont Copper, a Canadian-owned mineral exploration company, submitted a mining plan of operations to the National Forest Service in a bid to construct an $800 million open-pit copper mine and ore-processing facility here.

The move ignited a smoldering controversy into one of southern Arizona’s most explosive land-use debates in years.

At more than a third of a mile deep, and encompassing nearly 1,000 acres, the mine’s open pit would gouge a vast crater out of these hills, displacing millions of tons of earth and rock. According to Rosemont’s estimates, the mine would produce 230 million pounds of copper, 5 million pounds of a steel-making alloy called molybdenum and 3.5 million ounces of silver annually.

“Payback on this property is projected right now, based on $800 million, within three years,” says Dennis Fischer, the project site manager for Rosemont. “That’s a pretty good payback.”

At that level of production, the Rosemont mine would be the fourth largest copper mine in the country, generating 5 percent of the United States’ copper needs for every year of its projected 19-year lifespan, company officials say. If things go the company’s way, the mine could be fully operational as soon as 2011.

But the true cost exceeds any dollar figure. One state wildlife expert said the mine would render the half of the Santa Rita Mountains “virtually worthless” to many species.

ROSEMONT CRITICISMS GET LOUDER

An increasingly prominent opposition – which includes the elected leaders of four Arizona town and city councils, Pima and Santa Cruz counties, Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano and Democratic U.S. Reps. Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords – hopes to stop them.

“I really don’t see that putting a mine here would be good for anybody except for Rosemont Copper,” says Lainie Levick, a University of Arizona research hydrologist and board member of Save the Scenic Santa Ritas, an environmental group that opposes the mine. “It’s just a really bad idea. It’s a bad place for a mine.”

Rosemont’s opponents list a litany of reasons why the mine should not go forward, chief among them concerns about the project’s environmental impact and water use. Town councils from Sonoita, Patagonia and Green Valley, which sit close to the mine site, worry that increased noise and pollution will dampen tourism, a cornerstone of the regional economy. Local residents have also voiced concerns that heavy truck traffic will overburden the area’s two-lane highway and put themselves and their children at risk.

The mine will use an estimated 1.6 billion gallons of water each year from aquifers in the upper Santa Cruz basin near Green Valley. While the company has pledged to replace more water than it draws, some residents and experts fear that the area’s delicate hydrology could be badly damaged by the mine’s pumping.

“I’d like to hear about a mine that hasn’t had a leak or contaminated groundwater,” Levick says.

Company officials call environmental fears overblown, and insist that the economic benefit to the county and state from the mine far outweigh any potential negative impact.

In any case, they argue, the law is on their side.

“The law entitles us to pursue this operation and turn it into a profitable business,” Fischer says.

FOREST SERVICE HOLDS THE KEY

Whether or not Rosemont’s legal argument carries the day will fall first to officials with the U.S. Forest Service. Three-fourths of the proposed mine’s 4,400-acre footprint lies within the boundaries of Coronado National Forest, giving the Forest Service priority status in reviewing Rosemont’s proposal.

Under federal law, mining is an allowable use for Forest Service land.

“We do not have the discretion to pick and choose which legal use of the public land is presented to us, whether you’re presenting a plan for a mine, grazing or timber harvesting,” says John Able, a Coronado National Forest spokesman. “If it’s legal, we’re compelled by law to give that a consideration.”

While federal law may appear tilted in favor of Rosemont, a number of statutes could lead Forest Service officials to request major changes to the mine plan of operation, or even to deny Rosemont’s permit applications.

“Essentially, what we would have to do to totally stop that process would be to find a violation of the law, for which there would be no mitigation,” Able says. “If that were discovered, then that could theoretically stop the process.”

If they exist, major violations of the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act or the Endangered Species Act could all spell trouble for the project.

Rosemont, however, appears to have anticipated that environmental factors could derail the mine, and their plan of operations devotes significant attention to addressing concerns about air and water quality and impacts on wildlife. Company officials say they will employ sophisticated dust-control management techniques and water recycling to mitigate air and water pollution.

Several threatened or endangered species, such as the lesser long-nosed bat, the Chiricahua leopard frog and the American peregrine falcon, may also inhabit the area of the mine.

Joan Scott, habitat program manager for the Arizona Game and Fish Department’s Tucson office, has argued that the mine would have a devastating and permanent impact on the area’s wildlife. In a letter dated July 8, she urged the Forest Service to reject Rosemont’s permit application.

“We believe that the project will render the northern portion of the Santa Rita Mountains virtually worthless as wildlife habitat and as a functioning ecosystem,” she wrote.

Yet the mining plan’s authors suggest that Rosemont’s reclamation efforts will largely mitigate harm to wildlife, saying, “disruption to wildlife habitat and use will be minimal.”

Their plan involves launching reclamation efforts immediately after mining begins, instead of waiting until after mine operations are done. The restoration work would involve the contouring and re-vegetation of waste rock and tailings.

The plan of operations also addresses acid rock drainage, in which acid-bearing rock leaches harmful chemicals into streams and watersheds. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that acid rock drainage has contributed to the despoliation of 40 percent of U.S. headwaters.

Company officials say a high concentration of limestone naturally present on-site will act as a buffer against acid-generating rock.

“The chance of [acid] migrating through the waste rock would be small or minimal,” says Kathy Arnold, director of environmental and regulatory affairs for Rosemont.

COMPENSATION ISSUE LINGERS

Trouble for Rosemont also looms in the form of legislation introduced into the U.S. Congress by Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Tucson, chair of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests and Public Lands. The bill would withdraw Coronado National Forest lands in Pima and Santa Cruz counties from mining and mining-related activities, including those lands sought by Rosemont.

The law, if passed, could effectively stop the Rosemont mine, but at a cost: The withdrawal of lands from mining purposes requires claimholders be compensated for their losses. Compensation could either be arrived at through private negotiation or through the courts.

Rosemont would likely demand a huge settlement to recoup their multi-million dollar investment in the property, says Nyal Niemuth, chief mining engineer with the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources. “As they invest more and more capital, it’s more and more valuable to them.”

U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, whose district includes the project area, is a co-sponsor of the bill. She addressed the compensation issue in a September 2007 statement.

“For such a route to be feasible, non-federal funding would almost certainly be necessary in order for the legislation to garner widespread support in Congress,” she wrote. “There is no legislative silver bullet to address the issue of existing, valid mining claims, including Rosemont.

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>>Email the editor at klaw@zoniereport.com.