The US company Freeport McMoRan is ready to invest up to five billion dollars in the opening of a new copper and gold mine in the vicinity of Bor, should the results of the geological research confirm the feasibility of the project. This company has the rights of conducting geological research in that part of the country, and on the location “Cukaru Peki” they have discovered the reserves of 1.7 million tons of copper and 98 tons of gold.
The value of the deposit in the vicinity of Bor is estimated to 18 billion dollars. The average contents of copper in the ore is six-times of profitable minimum, which proves the richness of this deposit. So far, the Freeport McMoran has prodded 40 thousand square meters of the field, with encouraging results, in order to define the main characteristics of the newly found deposit. It has been announced that in this years the drilling will be continued at greater depths, to establish the size of the mining body and the contents of copper and gold. The Americans are hoping that the future research will entitle them to searching in several more location in these areas. So far 15 million dollars has been invested, but over the next few years that sum will be several time over. The mine near Bor might be opened in 5-6 years, and depending on the reserves and quality of the deposit, the investments could grow up to five billion. On top of that, each miner indirectly creates another 12 working places in accompanying works.
The branch of the Freeport McMoRan, the company Rakita Exploration has recently opened an Info Center in Bor, where the potential partners and citizens could obtain the information on the phases in the project in the locality “Cukaru Peki”.
The relevance of this part of the country is affirmed through the fact that the production of gold and silver in the Mining-Smelting Basin Bor has grown by 15% since the beginning of the year. By the end of March 4.5 million tons of ore was mined, and the processing yielded 9.5 thousand tones of concentrated copper, which is 1,000 tons more than the last year. The production has been improved primarily owing to the better results in the Majdanpek mine and the strip-mine Veliki Krivelj, while other localities have remained at the last year’s level. Progress has also been made in the production of accompanying material, and the biggest growth, 40%, was achieved with selenium.
The sales of all these products, with the exception of gold, which is turned over the Serbian National Bank, has enabled the value of exports from the Basin Bor to go over 28 million euros, which ranked the combine among top 10 exporters in Serbia. For the record, over the past 110 years of exploitation, the mines of Bor and Majdanpek have yielded approximately 5 million tons of copper and bit over 150 tons of gold.
Source Radio Serbia
