Romania to Sell Large Copper Mine

Romania's privatisation office, OPSPI, has set January 17 as the deadline for interested investors to submit bids for the sale of the government's 100 per cent stake in the country's largest copper mine, Cupru Min Abrud.

The mine is also one of the biggest in Europe with reserves of around 900,000 tonnes, which represents around 60 per cent of the European Union member's copper reserves.  
The OPSPI has already received 10 letters of intent from investors willing to participate, according to officials.

A foreign investor has recently bought another copper mine in Romania. Mineco AG company in Switzerland has won the direct negotiations sales procedures for the mines of the Romanian company SC Moldomin Moldova Noua. The Mineco Group, which already owns three mines in Serbia and in Bosnia, will invest 150 million euro in the Romanian copper mines, and willl create 400 jobs.

In September, President Traian Basescu said that gold, silver and copper mines in Romania must be reopened to create new jobs in  2012.

“We have underground resources like gold, silver, copper, which should be exploited. We can create jobs there," he said.

"If these mines were subsidized by the state five years ago, because of the worldwide prices growth of the three metals, we can now profitably exploit mines that have been closed,” Basescu said.

In addition, the government has recently unveiled plans to ease expropriation proceedings to make way for drilling sites.

Basescu is also a supporter of the controversial plan of the Canadian firm Rosia Montana Gold Corporation, RMGC, which aims to operate an open-cast gold mine in central Transylvania.

RMGC says it aims to extract 10.6 million ounces of gold over the period of a decade from the Rosia Montana site. Many historians, architects and civic and green activists are concerned about how this will impact on the environment, fearing it may damage mining galleries in the area that date back to Roman times.

RMGC denies that its work will damage the area. The company insists it will use the latest environmentally friendly technology, and it says it will spend around 50 million euro on preservation and protection of historic sites. The project has also split the local population in the impoverished region, where unemployment runs as high as 60 per cent.