Escondida
Photo by: BHP Billiton
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Global mining major on Thursday awarded a $3.4-billion contract to engineering, project management, and construction company Bechtel to build the water desalination plant to expand production at Escondida copper mine, located in the in the Atacama desert, of northern Chile.
Water would be taken to the mine site 183 km inland along a 42 inch pipe, and the project includes four high-pressure pumping stations, a high-voltage power line running along the waterline and electrical substations.
The project was expected to be complete in 2017, and would deliver 2 500 l of water a second.
The desalination plant would cost $3.4-billion.
BHP, which owns 57.5% and Rio 30% approved expansion plans at Escondida in 2012, and expected to mine 1.3-million tonnes a year from June 2015.
Escondida, the largest copper mine in the world, supplies about 7% of the world’s copper.