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Events/Discovery · 1981

Escondida porphyry copper found

Discovery, 1981, Chile.

What happened

A participant's column says Utah International began exploration in the Quebrada Escondida, south-east of Antofagasta, in 1981. Drill hole 23 was decisive, hitting secondary enrichment with chalcocite and bornite below 300 m of barren cover.1,2

Why it matters

Escondida became the largest copper mine in the world.1,2

Story cards

Around the same time

  1. Katanga declares its secession from Congo

    The copper-rich province broke away as an unrecognised state (Wikidata date).3

  2. China agrees to fund TAZARA with US$415 million

    A tripartite agreement signed in Beijing started surveys of the line.4,5,6

  3. TAZARA construction begins

    Tracklaying was finished by mid-1975 and the line was commissioned in July 1976.4,7

  4. Panguna mine: inception

    Panguna mine: inception.8

  5. TAZARA Railway opens

    TAZARA Railway opens.9

  6. Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines formed

    ZCCM was the vehicle for state ownership and later for the privatisation of the Copperbelt.10,11

  7. Northparkes block cave air blast

    Northparkes was the first block caving mine in Australia, and the Coroner's findings shaped how block caving is regulated there.12,13

  8. BHP leaves Ok Tedi after river damage claims

    It links a miner's exit from a mine to claims over river damage.14,15

Open the full timeline

Where next

Mines

Located inEscondidaSee the mine behind this story: Escondida.1

Sources

  1. La genesis de Escondida: el hallazgo que transformo la mineria chilena (opinion column by a participant) Guia Minera de Chile
  2. Escondida Mine (item Q14995147), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  3. Wikidata item Q1148907 (State of Katanga)
  4. 'Win-win' contested: negotiating the privatisation of Africa's Freedom Railway with the 'Chinese of today' Journal of Modern African Studies 59(1) (Cambridge University Press)
  5. Connective Financing: Chinese Infrastructure Projects and the Diffusion of Economic Activity in Developing Countries (Working Paper 64) AidData, William & Mary
  6. Wikidata item Q1960 (Dar es Salaam)
  7. Wikidata item Q985822 (Kapiri Mposhi)
  8. Wikidata item Q17060798 (Panguna mine: inception)
  9. Wikidata item Q1432750 (TAZARA Railway opens)
  10. About ZCCM-IH (history) ZCCM Investments Holdings
  11. Copperbelt Province (item Q1131523), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  12. 1999 Northparkes Air Blast case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  13. Parkes (item Q605513), coordinate location P625 Wikidata
  14. BHP lawsuit re Papua New Guinea (Ok Tedi) Business and Human Rights Resource Centre
  15. Ok Tedi environmental disaster (item Q7081685), coordinate location P625 Wikidata

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Chuquicamata from the ISS by Alexander Gerst (ESA), CC BY-SA 2.0; Haul trucks by Lechhabmed, CC BY-SA 4.0; Drilling and blasting by Siim Roov, CC BY-SA 4.0.