Mining is the extraction of valuable geological materials from the Earth and other astronomical objects. Mining is required to obtain most materials that cannot be grown through agricultural processes, or feasibly created artificially in a laboratory or factory. Ores recovered by mining include metals, coal, oil shale, gemstones, limestone, chalk, dimension stone, rock salt, potash, gravel, and clay. The ore must be a rock or mineral that contains valuable constituent, can be extracted or mined and sold for profit. Mining in a wider sense includes extraction of any non-renewable resource such as petroleum, natural gas, or even water.
Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow.
Catamarca is a province of Argentina, located in the northwest of the country. The province had a population of 429,556 as per the 2022 census [INDEC], and covers an area of 102,602 km2. Its literacy rate is 95.5%. Neighbouring provinces are : Salta, Tucumán, Santiago del Estero, Córdoba, and La Rioja. To the west it borders the country of Chile.
Minera Escondida is a mining company that operates two open pit copper mines in the Atacama Desert, 170 km southeast of Antofagasta in northern Chile. It is currently the highest producing copper mine in the world. Its 2007 production of 1.483 million tons of the metal was worth US$10.12 billion, mainly as metal in concentrate, but some as cathode, and was 9.5% of world output and 26% of Chilean production, according to the US Geological Survey's preliminary estimates of 2007 world mine output.
San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca is the capital and largest city in Catamarca Province in northwestern Argentina, on the Río Valle River, at the feet of the Cerro Ambato. The city name is normally shortened as Catamarca.
Chuquicamata is the largest open pit copper mine in terms of excavated volume in the world. It is located in the north of Chile, just outside Calama, at 2,850 m (9,350 ft) above sea level. It is 215 km (134 mi) northeast of Antofagasta and 1,240 km (770 mi) north of the capital, Santiago. Flotation and smelting facilities were installed in 1952, and expansion of the refining facilities in 1968 made 500,000 tons annual copper production possible in the late 1970s. Previously part of Anaconda Copper, the mine is now owned and operated by Codelco, a Chilean state enterprise, since the Chilean nationalization of copper in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Its depth of 850 metres (2,790 ft) makes it the second deepest open-pit mine in the world, after Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah, United States.
Codelco is a Chilean state-owned copper mining company. It was formed in 1976 from foreign-owned copper companies that were nationalised in 1971.
Peñoles is a subsidiary company owned by Grupo BAL. Peñoles is the second largest Mexican mining company, the first Mexican producer of gold, zinc and lead and the world leader in silver production. Peñoles is a company with active mines within Mexico and with some prospection projects in South America. Holdings includes the Fresnillo Silver Mine / Mina Proaño, the Met-Mex Peñoles metallurgical complex and Química del Rey; a Chemical facility; three operations. Peñoles produces about 80,500,000 troy ounces (2,500,000 kg) of silver and 756,100 troy ounces (23,520 kg) of gold annually. Other metals that the company produces are zinc, lead, copper, bismuth, and cadmium.
The Bingham Canyon Mine, more commonly known as Kennecott Copper Mine among locals, is an open-pit mining operation extracting a large porphyry copper deposit southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah, in the Oquirrh Mountains. The mine is the largest man-made excavation, and deepest open-pit mine in the world, which is considered to have produced more copper than any other mine in history – more than 19,000,000 short tons. The mine is owned by Rio Tinto Group, a British-Australian multinational corporation. The copper operations at Bingham Canyon Mine are managed through Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation which operates the mine, a concentrator plant, a smelter, and a refinery. The mine has been in production since 1906, and has resulted in the creation of a pit over 0.75 miles (1,210 m) deep, 2.5 miles (4 km) wide, and covering 1,900 acres. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1966 under the name Bingham Canyon Open Pit Copper Mine. The mine experienced a massive landslide in April 2013 and a smaller slide in September 2013.
Cerro de San Pedro is a village and seat of the municipality of Cerro de San Pedro, located in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí in central Mexico. It is located in hills, 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) northeast of the city of San Luis Potosí.
Romania ranks tenth in the world in terms of the diversity of minerals produced in the country. Around 60 different minerals are currently produced in Romania. The richest mineral deposits in the country are halite.
Friedrich Schickendantz was a German naturalized Argentine scientist who worked in the fields of mineralogy, chemistry, botany, geology, and meteorology. He was born in Landau, now in the Rhineland-Palatinate state of Germany. He studied chemistry and mineralogy at the University of Munich and the University of Heidelberg, under the direction of Robert Bunsen.
Southern Copper Corporation is a mining company that was founded in 1952. The current incarnation of Southern Copper can be traced to the 2005 acquisition of Southern Peru Copper Corporation by the Mexican copper producer Minera México.
Campo Arenal Aerodrome is an airport in Campo Arenal in the Catamarca Province of Argentina. It was built in 1995, by mining company Minera La Alumbrera. It has many regular flights operated by American Jet, flying small aircraft bringing workers from larger cities.
The mineral industry of Peru has played an important role in that nation's history and been integral to the country's economic growth for several decades. The industry has also contributed to environmental degradation and environmental injustice; and is a source of environmental conflicts that shape public debate on good governance and development.
The Batu Hijau mine is an open pit copper-gold mine operated by PT. Amman Mineral Nusa Tenggara. The mine is the second largest copper-gold mine in Indonesia behind the Grasberg mine of PT. Freeport Indonesia. The mine is located 1,530 kilometres (950 mi) east of the Indonesian capital Jakarta on Sumbawa, an island in West Nusa Tenggara Province, more precisely in the southern part of West Sumbawa Regency. The mine is the result of a ten-year exploration and construction program based on a 1999 discovery of the porphyry copper deposit. Production began in 2000.
Rovina mine is a proposed open pit mine in the west of Romania in Hunedoara County, 18 km north of Deva and 388 km north of the capital, Bucharest. Rovina is a large gold and copper deposit with estimated reserves of 4 million oz of gold and 244,000 tonnes of copper, and the largest proposed copper-gold project in the EU. The project is wholly owned by the Toronto-based company Eurosun Mining,.
The Agua Rica mine is a large copper mine located in northwest Argentina, in Catamarca Province. Agua Rica represents one of the largest copper reserve in Argentina and in the world having estimated reserves of 384.9 million tonnes of ore grading 0.56% copper and 0.033% molybdenum.
Farallon Negro is a volcano in the Catamarca province of Argentina. Active between about 9-8 million years ago, it was formerly a stratovolcano or a multi vent volcano. Eventually, erosion removed most of the volcano and exposed the underlying structure including subvolcanic intrusions.
The Cobre mine was a copper mine in Cuba, the oldest in the new world. The open pit mine was operated from 1544 to 1998. The Spanish used slave labour and free coloured labour to work the mine. After it had been abandoned, in the 19th century a British company acquired the mine and reopened it, again using slaves and free coloured labourers, but also using skilled Cornish miners and steam engines from Cornwall to operate pumps. The mine was abandoned again, then reopened by an American company at the start of the 20th century. After the Cuban Revolution it was taken over by the state. After being finally abandoned the pit is now filled with a mineral-rich lake.
