B.C. Smelter? Yes!

You’re in select company if you work at a British Columbia mine or mill. And you can count on becoming more select as time wears on. The province has 22 operating mines. Ten are threatened by depletion before 2001. Others might succumb to declining metal prices. Knowledgeable people, people such as Robert Hallbauer, the Cominco chief who seldom uses hyperbole or sky-is-falling rhetoric, have publicly warned of how rare an actual operations person could become. Unless government gets off the industry’s back, cutting, not adding to, the burden – with new tax measures; new fees for this, that and the other thing; and new regulatory requirements.

But, to my complete surprise, the government is demonstrating an entrepreneurial streak that seems very unNDP-like. Under its imprimatur, an “Information Memorandum,” published early this year, extolls the concept of a “world-scale copper smelter and refinery” on tidewater at Kitimat. (A small, private company, PRM Resources, is promoting the $500-$550-million smelter.) “It is the view of the Province that recent developments in the copper smelting industry support consideration of such an investment at this time,” the document begins. The recent development to which it refers is the current under-capacity in the world smelting business. Mining companies are seeing treatment charges rise significantly as a result. A Kitimat smelter also makes environmental sense. The document notes that feasibility studies “have identified no environmental or socio-econ9omic issues which would preclude development.”

Unfortunately, big companies have not shown the same enthusiasm. This is surprising, since, as PRM president Roger Taylor points out, a Kitimat smelter could anchor a thriving B.C. copper mining industry. It would cut concentrate shipment costs (I’m told a 10,000 -tonne shipment to Japan, port-to-port, runs $US22-$25/tonne) for existing mines, such as Highland Valley Copper, Gibraltar and other. And it would represent a cost-saving factor for the undeveloped deposits of the province. (See separate stories in this issue on the big open pit mines of B.C. and the “wannabes,” such as Fish Lake, Kemess South and Hushamu.)

“I’ve got support from the local community and from the government (both provincial and federal),” says Taylor. “The hold-up is the money.” Which means a major company with cash or access to it to fund the next stage of feasibility and, eventually, development of Taylor’s dream, a 200,000-tonne-per-year smelter.

Let’s hope that a major does discover the project makes economic sense. A B.C. smelter would produce that value-added component once so dearly sought by governments and economic nationalists right across the country. It might also ensure that B.C. mining people don’t become such a select group after all.