Russia’s Vnesheconombank (VEB) plans to use about $100 million of the National Wealth Fund’s money in 2017 to finance pre-front end engineering and design (pre-FEED) works at the Udokan copper field, VEB CEO Sergei Gorkov reported.
“The supervisory board has approved it, it was done rather a long time ago. This is not a large sum, slightly more than $100 million, which will be spent on finishing the pre-FEED”, he said. “The project was approved and I hope it will be implemented this year”.
He said the bank would use the National Wealth Fund’s money to finance the project.
In November 2016 VEB said it planned to leave the Udokan copper field project after the pre-FEED stage is finished.
The Udokan copper field is one of the world’s largest with reserves estimated at 2.3 billion tons with the copper content of 1.06%, or the copper reserves of 24.6 million tons under the JORC code.
The facility, which is to be constructed at the field, will have an ore processing capacity of 36 million tons per year. The project’s operator is Baikal Mining Company. (Prime/Ukrainian metal)