Resources giant Rio Tinto has held discussions with US President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to push ahead with a massive copper project in Arizona which has been thwarted by Native American opposition and permitting setbacks.
Trump – who has vowed to place tariffs on imported copper and invoked emergency powers to boost the ability of the US to produce critical minerals – may offer a way forward for Rio’s proposed Resolution open cut copper mine, which is 55 per cent owned by Rio and 45 per cent held by BHP.
The Resolution Copper mine in Arizona.Credit: Darryl Webb
“We at Rio have been trying to develop Resolution Copper, which is a very attractive, deposit in Arizona,” Rio’s head of copper, Katie Jackson, told participants at a world copper conference in Chile on Monday.
“We are hopeful that there is now more interest in the current administration in terms of the supply-demand balance and in terms of having a bigger US copper supply chain, and we hope that that will be part of getting projects like Resolution to move because it has historically been a long process,” Jackson, said.
Asked if Rio had held discussions with the current US administration about Resolution, she said: “We wouldn’t be meeting our fiduciary duties to shareholders if we didn’t talk to all the administrations of countries we operate in.”
The success of Rio’s mine currently depends on the outcome in the US, scheduled for the end of June, of a Supreme Court case launched by the Apache Stronghold who claim the parcel of federally owned land in Arizona under which the copper deposits lie, known as Oak Flat, is home to their deities, celebrated by generations.
Trump’s emergency powers may upend that process.
The administration wants to speed up permitting and prioritise production on federal land to loosen China’s grip on processing some of the world’s most important critical minerals.
Rio and BHP believe enough of the red metal can be dug out of a proposed 3-kilometre wide by 300-metre deep crater to supply a quarter of US demand. Apache Stronghold say the mine will destroy their ability to practice religion at a holy and sacred place.
Copper is a crucial component of the globe’s accelerating shift to renewable energy networks.
The clash with Apache Stronghold comes at a sensitive time for both Rio and BHP.
For the last five years, $148 billion ASX-listed Rio has been rolling out a co-management approach with traditional owners and updating its standards for cultural heritage management in response to the disastrous destruction of 46,000-year-old rock shelters in Juukan Gorge, in Western Australia, that plunged the company into crisis and made it the target of global condemnation.
Meanwhile, BHP is defending allegations in a London court that it “cynically and doggedly” avoided liability for billions in compensation to victims of the Mariana dam collapse, an iron ore project it jointly owned with Vale that caused Brazil’s worst environmental disaster. More than 600,000 Brazilians, 46 local governments and 2000 businesses are suing the miner claiming $70 billion. The 2015 dam failure and subsequent giant mudslide polluted kilometres of waterways, killed 19 and affected the livelihoods of thousands.
Another proposed US mine, controlled by Chile’s richest family, may also benefit from Trump’s vow. Antofagasta’s $US1 billion-plus Twin Metals Minnesota project, which also contains nickel, cobalt and platinum group metals, is also currently tied up in litigation in a federal court.
“We expect that there will be a much more welcoming and friendlier environment for our project,” Antofagasta chief executive Ivan Arriagada said in Santiago.
“Certainly, we see a common interest from all of those that are in that region to be able to move the agenda of copper-producing projects over there,” Arriagada said.
With Bloomberg