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Rio Tinto to continue drilling for copper in Uzbekistan

23 October 2014 17:24 (UTC+04:00)
Rio Tinto to continue drilling for copper in Uzbekistan

By Aynur Jafarova

British-Australian Rio Tinto Mining & Exploration Ltd. (Rio Tinto) will continue drilling for copper in Gava area in Uzbekistan's Namangan region in 2015 despite technical problems.

The news was announced by Director and General Manager of Rio Tinto Exploration in the Central Asia District Gary Hodgkinson at an international conference titled "Investment potential of solid minerals of Uzbekistan" held in Tashkent on October 23.

He didn't inform the participants about the parameters of drilling operations and just noted that the company is conducting all financial obligations envisaged at the license agreement.

Hodgkinson went on adding that Rio Tinto intends to become a long-term investor, creating a portfolio of projects in search of copper. It also hopes to be able to carry out exploration in promising areas of other regions of the country.

Rio Tinto is a leading international mining group headquartered in the United Kingdom. Rio Tinto's business is finding, mining and processing mineral resources. It's major products are aluminum, copper, diamonds, thermal and metallurgical coal, uranium, gold, industrial minerals and iron ore. It works across the globe and are strongly represented in Australia and North America with significant businesses in Asia, Europe, Africa and South America.

In December 2012, Uzbek State Committee for Geology and Mineral Resources issued a license to Rio Tinto for geological survey of the Gava area in the Namangan region for five years.

Earlier, Rio Tinto said in case of achieving positive results, the company will invest in exploration of copper in Uzbekistan up to $100 million.

Gava Exploration LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto, was established to work in Uzbekistan as an operating company. Rio Tinto is also exploring the possibility of implementing other projects in the mining industry of Uzbekistan.

Uzbekistan has significant reserves of metals, in particular gold, copper, lead, zinc, silver, tungsten, uranium and molybdenum. The country has large minerals development potential, most of which is economically viable.

Currently, there are 900 discovered ore occurrences and deposits of copper in Uzbekistan.

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