"Today Freeport production has resumed 50 percent," minister of energy and mineral resources Darwin Saleh said here on Tuesday.
Freeport`s normal production from Grassberg open-pit and Deep Ore Zone underground mines reached 220,000 to 230,000 tons of ore per day.
Darwin said after repair has been made on the pipe that people had cut production began again.
He said besides material losses the stoppage could also affect the area negatively like land slides.
PT Freeport Indonesia was forced to stop production of gold and copper as of Monday (Oct 17) morning after security situation worsened.
Freeport vice president Nurhadi Sabirin said the stoppage of production had been done at the open-pit mine as well as in the underground mine.
He said the pipe that flows gold and copper concentrate to the port had been cut in several sections and as a result the company could not send concentrate and therefore production was stopped.
The ore from the Freeport mine is transferred to a plant at Mile 74 in Mimika to be processed into concentrate with production reaching 6,000 to 7,000 tons a day.
The concentrate is then flowed by pipe to the port 114 kilometers away where it is dried before being sent to buyers.
Based on 2010 data each ton of ore contains eight kilograms of copper and 0.91 gram of gold. (*)
Editor: Aditia Maruli Radja
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