South Cotabato board votes to lift local ban on open-pit mining

The provincial board of South Cotabato has voted to lift the provincial ban on open-pit mining, which has been blocking the Tampakan copper-gold project for over a decade

In a Reuters report, Mines and Geosciences Bureau director Wilfredo Moncano said that the vote clears the remaining hurdle in developing one of the largest copper-gold reserves in Southeast Asia.

Moncano added that the major requirements supporting the mining operation have been compiled.

The Tampakan project is a 10,000 hectare project across not only South Cotabato, but also Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani ,and Davao del Sur. It previously had an estimated development cost of $5.9 billion before the provincial ban was imposed in 2010.

The project has the potential to yield around 375,000 tons of copper and 360,000 ounces of gold in concentrate per annum in its 17-year mine life.

South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo Jr. earlier proposed to keep the provincial government’s ban on open-pit mining.

The Tampakan mining project is a 25-year old contract granted to Australian firm Western Mining Corporation in 1995. The rights were transferred to Sagittarius Mines, Inc., a subsidiary of Indophil Resources Phils. Inc., in 2001. The contract expired on March 21, 2020, but was extended by another 12 years in 2016.

Pres. Rodrigo Duterte lifted the ban on open-pit mining late last year in an attempt to revive the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the onslaught of Typhoon Odette. His presumptive successor, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., expressed his concern about open-pit mining as “it is very difficult to control.”