MITTAL EYEING ARMENIAN COPPER-MOLYBDENUM FIELD – SOURCE
Interfax News Agency
Russia & CIS
February 27, 2008
Russia
Lakshmi Mittal, President and CEO of the world’s biggest steel producer
ArcelorMittal, is expressing an interest in a copper-molybdenum field
in Armenia, a source from the country’s mining and metals industry
told Interfax.
Artur Ashugian, head of the Department for the Economics of Natural
Resource Use and Mining at the Armenian Trade and Economic Development
Ministry, has said he met with Mittal in Yerevan last week to discuss
the general prospects for cooperation, however "no specific intent
has yet been expressed."
But the industry source said Mittal was interested in the Dastakert
copper-molybdenum field in southern Armenia.
The Dastakert field went on stream in the mid-1950s and was developed
for 10-15 years by the underground method. Dastakert was mothballed
when the Kajaran copper-molybdenum field, the FSU’s biggest, went into
production, also in Armenia. Dastakert was deemed to be unprofitable
as its reserves were not as large as those of the Kajaran or Armenia’s
Agarak deposits, although they were richer in molybdenum.
Dastakert is also surrounded by unexplored mineralizations containing
copper and molybdenum and it is thought it would be profitable to
revive the fields at today’s high prices for the metals.