Amazing pics indeed. Now that’s what I call an orebody!
As it happens, I was working for previous owners of Bingham Canyon some years ago and was lucky enough to have a guided pit visit one Sunday morning.
Bingham Canyon is one of the venerable 'oldies' in the porphyry copper business. The Canyon was found (and settled) by the Bingham brothers in mid-nineteenth century
The low grade orebody has copper, gold, silver & molybdenum and was first opened up to large scale mining in 1906
They move about 180 million tons of material (ore + waste) every year. I remember noting that Bingham would mine the equivalent of Mt Isa’s annual output, every 2 or 3 days!
Because of its age and the high tonnage mining, the pit is now huge. It’s said to be the biggest man-made excavation on the planet – about 4.5km across and 1.2km deep.
I remember seeing the mine from a viewing platform on the edge of the pit. I cheekily told my guide that I was surprised that the mine wasn’t working, even though it was a Sunday [and keep in mind that Salt Lake City (Mormon town) was just down the road].
My guide said: “Look a little more carefully. There’s seven shovels working down there and they’re loading 3 trains!” I looked again and of course he was right.
The mine tour included a trip to the bottom of the pit (after all, I was a ‘staff’ visitor). It took a long time down that spiral. When we got to the bottom I was impressed with the colour of the water in the sumps – a nice blue-green copper colour. Of course, it was pumped up to the plant and the copper recovered.
Makes me wonder about the copper concentration in the water from the dewatering bores at Rocklands. Surely CDU have had a look at it? Might be another (small?) income stream, eh?
CDU Price at posting:
$3.57 Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
