Cobre Panamá is an open-pit copper mine in Panama, located west of Panama City and from the Caribbean Sea coast, in the district of Donoso, in the western part of the province of Colón. The mine consists of four zones totalling 13,600 ha (34,000 acres). The main deposits are at Botija, Colina and Valle Grande. With 3.1 billion t (6.8 trillion lb) of proven and probable reserves, Cobre Panamá is one of the largest new copper mines opened globally since 2010. It is located next to the Petaquilla mine. For 2024, Cobre Panamá is made up of a copper mine, processing plant, power plant and the international port of Punta Rincón.
Commercial production started in September 2019. At full current capacity, the plant will process 85 Mtpa of ore to produce more than 300,000 t (660 million lb) of copper per year along with gold, silver and molybdenum. This is equivalent to 1.5% of global copper production as of 2023. The operation has a 34-year mine life. The three 28 megawatt SAG mills and four 16.5 megawatt ball mills installed at Cobre Panamá are the largest installed in the world up to the year 2020, except for the Sentinel mine in Zambia, also owned by First Quantum Minerals. The project is powered by a 300 MW coal fired power generation plant located at the port built for this mining operation.
Ownership As of 2017, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (FQM) has a 90 per cent equity interest in Minera Panamá, S.A. ("MPSA"),Minera Panama S. A. Dun & Bradstreet. Retrieved 2021-01-25. the Panamanian company that holds the Cobre Panama concession. The remaining equity is owned by Korea Resources Corp. (KORES, 10%), which is owned by the state of Korea. Cobre Panamá is a trade name used in Panama, not the legal name, of Minera Panamá, S.A.First Quantum as the company operating the mine site in Donoso, Panama
In November 2023, during the protests in Panama, Jiangxi Copper, a Chinese state-owned company, became the largest shareholder of First Quantum, increasing its stake in Minera Panama from 18.3% to 19.5% by purchasing 1.35 million shares.
History
Since the Spanish colonial times Cerro Petaquilla became the established route by force for gold explorers and included in stories and reviews by historians, it was an area where foundries and brands were established to claim the gold that was melded for the Spanish Crown. The existence of mineral deposits in the area around Cerro Petaquilla motivated the Spanish Crown and its representatives to the development of rudimentary mining procedures in the 1600s.REVISTA CULTURAL LOTERIA, Enero – Febrero 2004 No 452 Tema: La Ilusión del Oro El Gobernador Juan López de Sequiera, su entrada y conquista del Coclé. (Pág. 33) – Biblioteca Nacional Panamá. (Cultural Lottery Magazine January - February 2004 No. 452 Subject: The Illusion of Gold The Governor Juan Lopez de Sequiera, his arrival and conquest of Cocle)
Ever since the 1960s, there has been a gradual push by several Panamanian governments usually in succession, to introduce mining and extractive industries to Panama and position them as the main drivers of economic growth and activity in the country, particularly in the country's interior, transitioning Panama away from a transit-based economy (transitismo in Spanish) which is based on the Panama Canal and Panama's key location in the Americas, into an extractivist economy which would allow the government to take on more debt and prevent tax reforms which could be avoided with a higher GDP number provided by mining. This push has also been driven by a perceived lack of alternative revenue and economic growth sources which are seen as specially lacking outside the surroundings of the Panama Canal. This extractivist economy or economic model includes not only the mine but also other activities of the primary sector of the economy such as agriculture.
The initial exploration of the site, known as Cerro Petaquilla or Petaquilla, began in 1968 by a mission of the United Nations Development Programme, made in cooperation with the Panamanian government at the time. During this time it was believed that no other alternative revenue sources were available to the country.https://revistas.usma.ac.pa/ojs/index.php/IEP/article/download/383/95/1085 The first discovery of copper was made in 1969, and by 1970, detailed exploration and feasibility studies were underway. During the rule of Omar Torrijos Herrera, the "Alliance for Progress" was carried out with US backing, which included exploration for copper mining on the site. Mining law in the country was changed repeatedly until 1988.Contribuciones de la jurisprudencia panameña al desmantelamiento del Estado minero: comentarios a la sentencia del 27 de noviembre de 2023 These exploration missions in the country continued until 1982, amid political tension in the country at the time. After the US invasion of Panama, under the first post-intervention Panamanian President, Guillermo Endara, plans to exploit the mine were continued by the granting of an exploration license, called a contract, on the mine site. He helped establish contract 27-A for exploration of the site, assigned to Geo-Recursos Internacional, headed by Richard Fifer. Fifer was well connected to several panamanian presidents. When Ernesto Pérez Balladares as president granted his company extraction rights on the mine site, he represented the government on mining affairs. During Moscoso's presidency from 1999 to 2004, he was governor of Coclé province and was a Security advisor to the government. Martin Torrijos (2004-2009) allowed him to start mine development operations and Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014) allowed him to obtain an export license for Petaquilla Gold. Ricardo Martinelli said of Petaquilla Gold mine: "It carries out responsible mining and offers employment to at least 1,200 Panamanians" whose social security payments were not made by the company as required under Panamanian law. José Gabriel Carrizo, who would later become vice president of Panama, served as lawyer for Petaquilla Gold, of which his mother Lydia Jaén de Carrizo served as executive.
The original mining contract for mineral extraction was given to Geo-Recursos Internacional (now known as Minera Petaquilla, S.A.) through the Law 9, approved on 26 February 1997 by the National Assembly during the presidency of Ernesto Pérez Balladares. Minera Petaquilla was a joint venture between Inmet, Teck (Teck-Cominco) and Petaquilla Minerals which was organized under Canadian Law, but mostly operated in Panama. Adrian Resources was the former name of Petaquilla Minerals.
In 1997, Inmet Mining Corporation was part of the joint venture for the project. From 1998 to 2003 the project sat dormant due to low copper prices.https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1405-33222020000300012 In 2005, The Petaquilla minerals project was split into two: Petaquilla Gold and Petaquilla Copper. Petaquilla Gold would later remain under control of Petaquilla Minerals and was later sold to Petaquilla Gold, S.A., and Petaquilla Copper which initially remained part of the joint venture but later came under control of Teck and Inmet in 2008. Petaquilla copper was purchased by Inmet in 2008. To avoid losing the mining concession, work to start mining (mine development) first began in Petaquilla Gold around 2005.
The development of the copper mine began in 2011 by Inmet, and construction started in 2015. Minera Panamá, S.A. (MPSA) was established under Inmet. This copper mine project was owned by Inmet Mining until 2013, when this company was taken over by First Quantum Minerals Ltd. (FQM). Construction continued over the next six years until 2019. Cobre Panamá represents a total US$6.2 billion investment, partly financed by deposits in the amount of US$1,356 million from Franco-Nevada against future deliveries of gold and silver produced by the mine.
Juan Carlos Varela, who served as President of Panama from 2014 to 2019, extended the concession for an additional 20 years in 2016. It is reported that all presidents of Panama in the post-intervention era (starting from 1989) have been involved in expanding or supporting the operations of the copper mine, including Mireya Moscoso, Martín Torrijos and Ricardo Martinelli, all of whom served from 1999 to 2014.
Lawyer Juan Ramón Sevillano filed a claim for the unconstitutionality of Law 9 in 1998, which was done again by lawyer Susana Serracín in 2009 but it was not ruled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Justice until 25 September 2018, 21 years later. The ruling was formally published in the government gazette on 2021, three years after the Supreme Court's decision due to legal measures by First Quantum's law firm Morgan & Morgan to delay its publication, even though the ruling was in effect without being published. Despite this the mine's construction continued in 2019 and the mine went into operation that same year and the governments of Juan Carlos Varela and Laurentino Cortizo made efforts to justify these actions.
By 2017, the project achieved 50% construction completion, and by 2018, the project was 80% complete.
There were plans to build a molybdenum beneficiation plant at the mine but it couldn't be built. Panama lacks legislation to oversee a mine closure process, and instead Panamanian governments have focused on making mining profitable in the country.
Activity The mine reached its first production milestone in 2019, producing its first copper concentrate. In September 2019, it achieved commercial production, and by February 2020, it reached an annualized production rate of 300,000 tonnes of copper made by processing 85 MTPA (million tons per annum, in other words millions of tons per year) of ore. The mine in 2022 was ramping up processing to 90 MTPA and had a goal of reaching 100 MTPA by the end of 2023. Construction was carried out at a cost of 10 billion US dollars and is the largest ever foreign investment by a private-sector company in Panama according to former Panamanian President Juan Carlos Varela, calling it the second most important project in the country besides the Panama Canal. First Quantum executives were ushered into the presidential palace and Philip Pascall was able to build rapport with Varela, offering Varela wine from his brother's vineyard, dining together. Varela kept a rock from the mine's first export in his personal office. The day before the mine was about to open, Varela toasted and dined with First Quantum executives. He had also personally visited the mine in 2017 and was present at the first copper export event at the mine. He personally took responsibility for the mine's operation and widely praised the operation of the mine and defended it calling the rejection in 2019 of the contract by parliament "inappropriate", asking it to reconsider the contract in order to provide "judicial security" as the mine had already started to export copper at the time.
Despite the mine's name, it also extracted and processed gold and silver from the mine's tailings which according to the company was done using a gravimetry or gravity separation process and an electric arc furnace. According to the company the gold produced by the mine was in the form of Doré bars which must be further processed for use. The bars are mostly (around 75% to 90% of the bar) made up of silver, with the remainder being gold and impurities. The mine produced 139,751 ounces of gold, and 2,813,129 ounces of silver in 2022, making it First Quantum's largest gold-producing mine.
The type of ore at the mine is likely Copper Sulfide ore, Iron oxide copper gold ore deposits, porphyry copper deposits and there are three open pits at the mine site according to observations made by environmental organization CIAM. According to the same organization during the first visit to the mine site, the news outlets in the visit did not question the handling of the mine site by the government nor First Quantum.