Antam denies to cooperate with INCO

State owned general mining company PT Aneka Tambang Tbk last week denied reports that it has reached an agreement to cooperate with nickel mining company PT INCO in prospecting for nickel in the latter's mining concession in the South East Sulawesi province.

Earlier, Jakarta-based Kompas daily quoted INCO's spokesman Latif Hasim as saying the two mining companies would soon sign an agreement on the joint exploration of INCO's mine concession which covered an area of about 63,500 hectares in the province.

Antam has a big nickel operation in the province's area of Pomalaa.

Antam Operation director Harsojo Dihardjo told Petromindo.com in interview last week that the agreement was still a long way to go.

"The agreement should be a win-win deal for Antam, INCO and the government of South East Sulawesi. But, we have yet to come closer to that (the deal)," he said.

The government of South East Sulawesi has several times pushed INCO to speed up its exploration in the area and start production immediately to enable the province to benefit from the mining concession. It has even threatened to revoke INCO's contract of work if it did not develop its mining concession area.

Latif said INCO could not embark on exploration activities immediately in the area as it still focused its activity in Soroako, South Sulawesi.

Harsojo said currently there was no clear concept on how to jointly explore the mining concession.

"We still don't know whether to form a joint venture, or we would become INCO's contractor," he said.

Antam was only interested in the cooperation if the cooperation scheme was long term in nature, he further said.

He said it was actually more economical for INCO to cooperate with Antam as the former could use the latter's production facility in the province. (alex)