With American sentiment high and riding on a renewed fervor to establish the country as a natural resource power house no longer dependent on foreign minerals, the House recently voted on a land swap that will give a needed boost to a potentially huge Arizona copper mine.
According to The Associated Press, the measure was approved on Wednesday, October 26, and was passed under the notion that North America’s largest copper mine would be built in the region. The land swap will trade 2,400 acres of federal forest land in the southeast corner of Arizona for roughly 5,300 acres of land across the state that was, until Wednesday, controlled by one of global mining heavyweight Rio Tinto’s subsidiaries.
The bill passed with firm support, as the Republican-controlled House voted in favor of the swap 235 to 186.
Now, lawmakers and business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Mining Association, are celebrating the the approval. Industry leaders claim the proposed mine, which will lie 70 miles east of Phoenix, will bring in billions of dollars to Arizona’s economy, and create a pool of mining-related jobs that could attract as many as 4,000 workers from various mining services.
Members of the House also praised the decision for the affect the mine will have on the copper mining outlook in America.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, copper’s ubiquity in many manufactured products makes it a key indicator in economic performance. The metal has become a staple in the manufacturing industry for its highly valued properties of ductility, malleability and thermal and electrical conductivity, and ranks third among the highest-consumed metals.
The brown metal is used in power transmission and generation, building wiring, telecommunications and untold amounts of electrical products.
Increased domestic copper production could greatly benefit American manufacturing, the mine’s supporters say.
“There is no excuse for the United States to depend on foreign nations for our minerals supplies when we have ample reserves that could be developed here at home,” said Doc Hastings, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.
The new plan, which first appeared in 2005, will allow a Rio Tinto subsidiary to begin operations across more than 2,4000 acres of federal forest that is estimated to contain astounding resources of high-grade copper, a deposit potentially worth billions of dollars, the AP stated.
In exchange for the copper-laden land, Rio Tinto’s Resolution Copper Co. subsidiary, which performs mining operations around the world, will hand over 5,300 acres to the federal government.
With the acquisition of the new land, Rio Tinto announced that it plans to perform several studies of the deposits to determine exactly how much copper lies below and the grade at which it has formed, Dow Jones Newswires reports. The company expects to develop new ways to approach mining in the region that will allow production to begin by 2020.
Resolution Copper has already invested heftily in the new project, with more than $600 million spent on studies and geology services. Once the mine begins construction, the Rio Tinto subsidiary claims it will invest billions more into the potentially lucrative site.
Fellow mining giant BHP Billiton Ltd. is also said to own a 45 percent interest in the new mining project.
With the addition of a massive new copper mine, the U.S., with its advanced infrastructure and established mining procedures, could benefit greatly from a domestic source of the widely used metal.
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