Tethyan Copper plans $3b investment

KARACHI (Reuters) - A foreign joint-venture company plans to invest up to $3 billion in a copper and gold mine, the ventures chief executive said on Tuesday.
Tethyan Copper Co. Ltd., a joint venture between Canadas Barrick Gold and Chiles Antofagasta Plc, one of the worlds largest copper miners, has been granted an exploration license for the Reko Diq site in the southwestern province of Balochistan.
The sites ore reserves, a mixture of minerals, are estimated at 4 billion tonnes, of which 0.5 percent is expected to be copper with 0.29 gram of gold per tonne of ore, Tethyan Chief Executive Cassie Boggs told Reuters in an interview.
We think the investment is probably going to be between $2.5 and $3 billion, Boggs said by telephone.
Pakistans foreign direct investment for the first 11 months of the 2008/09 fiscal year (July-June) was $3.32b.
Tethyan is working on a feasibility study which is expected to be finished by early next year. The aim of the project is to exploit both copper and gold deposits, Boggs said.
Tethyan has a 75pc interest while the govt of Balochistan holds the remaining 25pc.
The project is expected to create up to 9,000 jobs in the construction phase, which will last for about three years, and then employ up to 3,000 people once the mine is operational.
Initially, we will need to probably bring in people from the outside with certain mining expertise, said Boggs.
But certainly, the plan is to train and develop the local workforce. Security, I think, is a concern wherever we operate in the world, said Boggs. Here in Pakistan, all the current events makes security a concern but we believe actually security is manageable. Boggs said the company would continue to weigh the benefits against the risks but felt the project had a lot of potential for its investors and for Pakistan.