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1) Arizona Sonoran Copper (ASCU) has received its mined land reclamation permit from the Arizona's Mine Inspector's Office for the Cactus mine in less than 4 months. The company expects to release its prefeasibility study in the fourth quarter of this year for the Cactus mine, a porphyry copper deposit located on private land in between Pheonix and Tucson near the city of Casa Grande. In a note to clients, Haywood Securities mining analyst Pierre Vaillancourt said the quick permitting time demonstrates the state regulators’ faith in the project. “The latest permit bolsters our confidence in ASCU’s ability to work with the Arizona government and move Cactus forward,” he wrote. The brownfield mine, which was owned and operated by ASARCO between 1972 - 1984, was acquired in 2020 and released an integrated preliminary economic assessment in 2021 outlining an 18-year mine life which can produce 1 billion pounds of copper. Arizona Sonoran has already received the aquifer protection permit and stormwater pollutant prevention permit, entitled water rights, dust control permitting and general planning and zoning amendment approvals. The only permit remains is the industrial air permit before the company applies for development permits.
2) Glencore see $1 billion in value when looking at adopting a joint approach to two giant copper mines in Chile as part of the Teck Resources merger. Teck's Quebrada Blanca (QB) mine is the key part of the appeal of Glencore wanting to acquire the company. As mentioned in an earlier mining brief, the QB2 phase will increase the production of the mine to as much as 315,000 tons. Glencore said that operating QB jointly with the nearby Collahausi mine, would add at least $1 billion of value to the metals firm. Glencore also mentioned that it would share infrastructure rather than creating a single operation. If this were to happen, the Collahuasi-QB mine would leapfrog Freeport-McMoRan's Grasberg mine in Indonesia as the world's number 2 copper mine, second only to BHP's Escondida mine in Chile.
3) The International Seabed Authority (ISA) will start accepting applications in July from companies that want to mine the ocean's floor. This comes after a decision was finally made by the UN body after two weeks of debating standards on the new practice. Once an application is submitted, ISA will have three business days to inform the governing council. The council plans to meet virtually before July to further debate whether approval of these applications could be delayed once received.