Copper Mining in Indonesia

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We the undersigned declare that the following paper is purely our own work. No work of others that we use without mentioning the source. This paper has never been used or presented for other assignment. We understand that this paper may be reproduced and or communicated for the purpose of detecting plagiarism.

1. The Nature of Copper

Copper is a metallic element found in nature. In its solid metal form, copper is an important material in our everyday life. It is a pink metal which turns brownish when oxidized. Copper is a ductile material compared to other metal such as steel and it has high thermal conductivity and electrical conductivity. It is yet cheap and can be easily processed. Copper alloys have been used for centuries; from statues to electric part. They have been produced for centuries. Ancient alchemists had tried to find out a way to produce gold from other metals before they ended up in producing an alloy known as brass, an alloy of copper and zinc. Traditionally produced for jewelries, statues, and ornaments, the application of brass now vary. It is a well-known copper alloy used to make the brass musical instrument such as trumpet and saxophone. Apart from brass, bronze is also a wellknown alloy of copper, a combination of copper and tin.

a.

b.

c.

Figure 1.1 Different applications of copper a.) Copper wire b.) Brass trumpet c.) Bronze Statue. copperwiremusic.com. bronze-statues.com. bronze-statues.com In our modern life where electricity is crucial for our daily activities, we need good performing conductors where high electrical conductivity is needed. Ductility is also required for materials such as wire. Silver is the highest electric conducting metal. Despite its good electrical conductivity, it is an expensive metal that industries do not produce such metal for electrical part in our everyday life. Instead, they use copper as it is cheap. That is

why copper is one of the most important metals beside steel and aluminium and its production has been running for years. Technology has played its part on copper development. In 20 Century found a processing technology which is able to process copper more effectively and efficiently. The technology is called Froth Floatation. With this kind of processing technology has made it easier to produce copper with concentration 25% to 35%. In optimal condition, occasionally can produce copper with concentration 50%. In copper industry there are many type of Copper-Alloy with variation in shape and purposes.

2. Copper Ore
Copper is a naturally occurring element. They are extracted from other substances known as minerals. Minerals are inorganic, naturally occurring solid substances that we can find around us. They are composed of different elements, usually more than one. Minerals are source of metals that we use in our life. Minerals which are used to produce metals are known as ore. Copper does not always occur in minerals with more than one element. They may form native mineral or mineral with a single element, or in other words, they form themselves in nature. There are many ores which are used to produce copper. Basically they can be classified into 3 groups, which are sulfides, oxides, and native minerals. They are mainly sulfide minerals such as Chalcopyrite(CuFeS2) and Chalcocite(Cu2S). The other minerals are Bornite(CuSFe2S3), Malachite(CuCO3Cu(OH)2), and Cuprite(CuO). Chalcopyrite is the most abundant copper ore in the world and it is widely spread. Copper ores that can be found in Indonesia are Chalcopyrite, Chalcocite, and Bornite.

2.1 Copper Ore Crystallography

The crystal structure of minerals are more complicated than metals. One unit cell may contain more than one element. Each copper ore has distinctive crystallography, resulting in different properties of the minerals.

2.1.1 Crystallography of Chalcopyrite The chemical formula for chalcopyrite is CuFeS2. It is the most abundant copper ore. Chalcopyrite is a yellow mineral with hardness of 3.5 to 4 in the Mohs scale. This mineral forms tetragonal unit cell and scalenohedral form as shown in the picture below. The axial ratio for this mineral crystal lattice is a:c = 1:1.97159

Figure 2.1 Chalcopyrite crystal structure. som.web.cmu.edu The crystal structure is very closely related to the Zinc Blende crystal structure where one sulphur atom is bonded to four zinc atoms and vice versa. In chalcopyrite crystal structure, one sulphur is bonded to two copper ions and two iron ions. The blue sphere shows the copper ion, the brownish sphere shows the iron ion, and the yellow sphere shows the sulphur ion.

2.1.2 Crystallography of Bornite The mineral bornite forms orthorhombic crystal structure with dipyramidal form. The axial ratio for this mineral crystal lattice is a:b:c =0.5008:1:0.5008

2.1.3 Crystallography of Chalcocite Chalcocite forms monoclinic crystal structure. The chemical formula for this mineral is Cu2S. The oxidation state for the copper is 1+. The crystal form of this mineral is prismatic. The crystal lattice axial ratio is a:b:c =0.4348:1:0.4937

2.2 Copper Ore Deposits

Indonesia is expanding along highly tectonic activity area, relatively young and still operating, thus the mineralization process is widely open. Some exception in certain location, Indonesian geographic morphology supports that mining site could be reached at average less than 100 kilometers. The largest copper deposit in Indonesia is the Grasberg open pit mine, which is the third largest copper mine in the world. This open pit mine, located in Tembagapura, Irian Jaya, belongs mostly to Freeport McMoran Copper & Gold. This deposit is 24,700 Acres wide (Block A), 500,000 Acres wide (Block B). All mining and exploration activity on both blocks are done by PT. Freeport McMoran. This deposit production has reached 750,000 tonnes of copper per year or barely 7% of world copper production. The company has 67.3% of the ownership, the rest belongs to Rio Tinto (13%) and PT Indocopper Investama Corporation (9.3%). The government of Indonesia only has 9.3% of the ownership. Apart from being a copper mine, Grasberg mine is also the first largest gold mine in the world, with copper being its primary commodity. The copper reserves contain noticeable amount of gold and silver. The mineral dominating the area is chalcopyrite. Bornite is also present in this area but with lesser content. Soehoed (2005: 7), PT. Freeport McMoran exploit Grasberg Deposit from copper ores and processes it until concentrate stage. The copper concentrate usually contains 29%-31% copper, besides 0.7 - 0.9 troy ounce gold and 2-3 troy ounce silver for each tons dry ores. Earlier the whole concentrate was sold to Custom Concentrate Market, until PT Smelting (Gresik) was established on February 1996, approximately 50% of PT. Freeport McMoran Copper Concentrate Product is sold to this Smelter. Contract between PT. Freeport and Indonesian government belongs to Kontrak Karya freeport. Shareholder between this company and Indonesian government is 81.28% and 9.36%. And the rest of 9.36% belongs to PT. Indocopper investama.

The second mine we are going to look at is Batu Hijau mine, located in Sumbawa island, in the province of West Nusa Tenggara. Batu Hijau is a porphyry copper deposit and is rich in gold. The copper ores found in this mine are mostly sulfide minerals, which are chalcopyrite and bornite, similarly to that in Grasber mine. Based on the feasibility study, Batu Hijau's ore reserves were 1.1 billion tons containing 52.5% copper and 0.37 grams per ton of gold. At the current production rate, Batu Hijau's mine life is expected to continue until 2023. This deposit is exploited by PT. Newmont Nusa Tenggara since the contract was signed on 1986. The production rates of this deposit has reached 200,000 tones per year of copper concentrate

Batu Hijau Deposit http://www.newmont.co.id/images/pic_au_batuhijau1.jpg

This copper mine was first explored by PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara and it was finished being explored in 1999. The mine belongs to Newmont Indonesia, Nusa Tenggara Mining Corporation, PT Pukuafu Indah, and PT Multi Daerah Bersaing with Newmont has the most ownership which is 35.44%, Nusa Tenggara Mining Corporation with 27.56%

ownership, PT Pukuafu Indah with 20%, and PT Multi Daerah Bersaing with 17% ownership.

Copper Deposit Indonesia is expanding along highly tectonic activity area, relatively young and still operating, thus the mineralization process is widely open. Some exception in certain location, Indonesian geographic morphology supports that mining site could be reached at average less than 100 kilometers. In indonesia, copper deposit is found in high Papua, named Grasberg Deposit. This mine site is the third largest Copper mining in the world. This deposit is 24,700 Acres wide (Block A), 500,000 Acres wide (Block B). All mining and exploration activity on both blocks are done by PT. Freeport McMoran. This deposit production has reached 750,000 tonnes of copper per year or barely 7% of world copper production. Soehoed (2005: 7), PT. Freeport McMoran exploit Grasberg Deposit from copper ores and processes it until concentrate stage. The copper concentrate usually contains 29%-31% copper, besides 0.7 - 0.9 troy ounce gold and 2-3 troy ounce silver for each tons dry ores. Earlier the whole concentrate was sold to Custom Concentrate Market, until PT Smelting (Gresik) was established on February 1996, approximately 50% of PT. Freeport McMoran Copper Concentrate Product is sold to this Smelter. Contract between PT. Freeport and Indonesian government is called Kontrak Karya freeport. Shareholder between this company and Indonesian government is 81.28% and 9.36%. And the rest of 9.36% belongs to PT. Indocopper investama. volume near Puncak Jaya,

Batu Hijau Deposit http://www.newmont.co.id/images/pic_au_batuhijau1.jpg

Another copper deposit location in indonesia, is taking place in Batu Hijau Deposit on West Sumbawa Province, West Nusa Tenggara. Based on the feasibility study, Batu Hijau's ore reserves were 1.1 billion tons containing 52.5% copper and 0.37 grams per ton of gold. At the current production rate, Batu Hijau's mine life is expected to continue until 2023. This deposit is exploited by PT. Newmont Nusa Tenggara since the contract was signed on 1986. The production rates of this deposit has reached 200,000 tones per year of copper concentrate.

Export-Import Flow of Copper Though Indonesia is one of world copper producer, we still have to import both ore concentrate and copper alloy from abroad to overcome national necessity. And also, Indonesia exports both Copper ores and concentrate, and copper alloy to international market.the diagrams below shown Import flow along past 5 years

And if we convert the data into USD currency, tha data show in the graph below

As Indonesia owns copper deposits which are distributed on some spot on eastern-indonesia, we also exports both copper ores and concentrate and copper alloy to abroad. The export flows shown on graph below. I

And if the export flows on weight converted into currency (US$) the data are shown on graph below.

The export-import data shows that even we have copper deposit on our country, and we exports a large number of copper ores, concentrate, and alloy, we still need to import ores, concentrate, and alloy to fulfill the national necessity. As if the government reduce the amount of export flow in purpose to fulfill copper national necessity, we could safe a big amount of currency which is able to allocate to another side. References http://www.newmont.co.id/EN/aboutus_nnt.htm (Accessed on April 15th 8.26 pm) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grasberg_mine (Accessed on April 15th 7.48 pm) http://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeport_Indonesia (Accessed on April 15th 8.07 pm) http://www.ptfi.com/operation/default.asp (Accessed on April 15th 7.52 pm) http://webmineral.com/data/chalopyrite.shtml (Accessed on April 19th 8.17 pm) http://webmineral.com/data/bornite.shtml (Accessed on April 19th 8.28 pm) http://webmineral.com/data/chalcocite.shtml (Accessed on April 19th 8.46 pm) Katalog Export 2007 Volume 2, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Export 2008 Volume 2, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Export 2009 Volume 2, Badan Pusat Statistik

Katalog Export 2011 Volume 2, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Export 2007 Volume 2, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Import 2007 Volume 1, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Import 2008 Volume 1, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Import 2009 Volume 1, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Import 2010 Volume 1, Badan Pusat Statistik Katalog Import 2011 Volume 1, Badan Pusat Statistik Soehod, AR, 2005, Sejarah Pengembangan Pertambangan PT. Freeport Indonesia di Provinsi Papua (Jilid 4); Pertambangan dan Pembangunan Daerah, Aksara Karunia, Jakarta. (pg : 1, 7, 19, 29, 108, 140, 141, 144)