RI?s copper reserves to deplete in 29 years

By Thomas Sembiring

The government projected that the country?s copper reserves will deplete in 29 years until 2045 assuming existing processing facilities at home run at current production rate, and no new reserves are found.

This was said by Director for Mineral Processing and Development at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Muhammad Hidayat recently.

Hidayat said that the country?s copper ore reserves currently stand at around 2.6 billion tons, owned by three mining firms PT Freeport Indonesia, PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara, and PT Gorontalo Minerals.

Meanwhile, average production rate of existing processing facilities over the past five years stood at around 2.3 million tons per year, of which PT Freeport accounts for 1.7 million tons, and PT Newmont the remainder.

Of the annual copper concentrates output, 1.3 million tons were exported, while the remainders were further processed at a smelter owned by PT Smelting Gresik in East Java, which in turn produces about 212,000 tons of copper cathode per year, and 1,800 tons per year of anode slime.

Hidayat said that about 67,000 tons of Smelting?s annual output are exported. The entire anode slime output are exported.

Editing by Reiner Simanjuntak