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1) The US Forest Service will plan to re-publish an environmental report before July, that will set in motion the planned land swap between the US government and Resolution Copper. As mentioned in our previous Mining Brief, the underground will be one of the largest in the United States and have the ability to supply about 25% of the domestic demand.
Source: US Forest Service to OK land swap for Rio's Tinto's Arizona copper mine before July - MINING.COM
2) Chile will limit the mining royalty bill after criticism from the industry on the impact of the industry's competitiveness. Mario Marcel, the Finance Minister said that certain limits that do not change the bill can be modified during the legislative stage. "One of them is to make up start-up expenses as a cost for the calculation of the adjusted mining operational taxable income," Mr. Marcel said. He also added that there would be a limit to the potential tax burden for combining taxes and companies with operating losses would be exempt from the "according to value" component of the bill. With these latest changes, the royalty would amount to 1% on copper sales and a part between 8% to 26% depending on the mining operation margin. Mr. Marcel also clarified that the bill included lithium at first, it has since been left out since the state development agency has better collection rates. Chile is the biggest producer of copper, with a number of mining giants operating in the country like Freeport-McMoRan, BHP, Glencore, and state-owned Codelco.
3) Chinese company, CMOC, is set to overtake Glencore as the world's top cobalt producer this year. CMOC came onto the scene when it acquired Tenke Fungurume mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2016 from Freeport - McMoRan. CMOC is aiming to double production of the mine this year and wants to bring another massive Congolese mine online in Q2 of this year, Kisanfu mine. The Kisanfu copper and cobalt mine will produce 30,000 tons this year, which will overtake Tenke and Glencore's Katanga as the world's largest cobalt mine. With these two projects, the Chinese miner is set to overtake Glencore, according to the company filings. We wrote about how the company is in dispute over the royalty payment with the government and it has been stockpiling material since July of last year. Congo's Finance Minister Nicolas Kazadi said that he is hopeful that a deal will be agreed to very soon with the stockpiled material looming on the outlook of the industry and cobalt market. In December, Antony Blinken signed a memorandum of understanding with the Congo and Zambia to explore opportunities to support their joint plan to develop an electric vehicle value chain.