Constellation Copper Resurrects Utah Copper Mining Project

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Constellation Copper Corporation (TSE:CCU)(Denver, Colorado), formerly Summo Minerals Corporation has resurrected the Lisbon Valley Copper mining and processing project (PEC 44000091) located in San Juan County, Utah, and is evaluating options to bring the property into operation. A recent upswing in copper prices has made the project attractive again. Base metals were quoted near their multi-year highs in London morning trading. Constellation has hired Merit Consultants International (Vancouver, British Columbia) to revisit and update the last feasibility study performed on the project in 2000. Merit is performing capital estimates and should be complete with the updated feasibility study by late 2003.

Constellation announced in September that it had signed a letter of intent, with Equatorial Mining Limited (Sydney, Australia), to purchase the copper processing facilities of Equatorial's North American subsidiary. Those assets, which include primary and secondary crushing, an ADR plant, and a solvent extraction electrowinning (SX-EW) plant, are located at the currently closed Tonopah copper mine (Plant 1024810) in Tonopah, Nevada. Merit Consultants will estimate the cost associated with dismantling the assets, transporting them over 600 road miles to Lisbon Valley site, assembling them, and bringing them into operation.

The Tonopah copper processing equipment is fairly new, as used equipment goes, and was put into operation in 1999, then subsequently shutdown in July 2001 due to poor metal recovery and market conditions. Equatorial Mining recently won a $157 million litigation with the engineers and constructors of the mine, and plant facilities, Kvaerner US, a subsidiary of Kvaerner ASA for negligence in preparation of the Tonopah feasibility study.

The Lisbon Valley copper mine will be located 45 miles southeast of Moab, Utah off of Highway 191, near Monticello, Utah.

Industrialinfo.com first began tracking this project in 1995.

Whether or not the project is viable or not is yet to be seen as this project has been repeatedly resurrected and killed several times during its history. Can the North American copper industry handle a new copper mine after so many existing operations owned by copper giants like Phelps Dodge have closed or scaled back operations during the last several years?