Mining 18: Nickel, Copper, Gold Production

To analyze the country's mining industry and propose certain government regulations and taxation policy, it is important to compare the local industry with those at the international level. So that there will be more solid basis for such regulations, like how much taxes to impose given certain costs of operation for different metallic products. And if government is over-taxing or under-taxing the industry.

I saw this informative 27-slides presentation on Philippines and global mining made in September 2012 by Intiera RMG. The data are useful and cool, posting some of them here.

The country's main metallic products as currently developed and mined are nickel and gold. Take note that these data refer only to large-scale metallic mining companies. "Small scale" mining data not included here.

We were the 3rd largest producer of laterite nickel in 2011, after Russia and Canada. Trailing the Philippines were Indonesia, Russia, New Caledonia and China.

These three charts below refer to copper mining. (a) Production from 2009-2011, (b) Copper in concentrate operating costs, and (c) Copper recovered grades.

The Philippines' copper production is very low compared to Chile, China, Peru, US and other countries. One reason is that the operating costs are rather high, more than $2 per pound. Interra noted that the country's "primary gold and copper mining currently averages amongst the lowest grades in the world, and it is outweighed by distance to port and then shipping distance to China."