Freeport Halts Grasberg Mine as Roadblock Enters 4th Day
(Bloomberg)
-- Freeport-McMoRan Inc. halted production at Grasberg, the world’s
second-largest copper mine by capacity, as workers blocked access to a road to
the mine in Indonesia for a fourth day. The price of the metal climbed in
London.
Freeport
will continue talks with the workers to resolve the blockade, Daisy Primayanti,
spokeswoman at PT Freeport Indonesia, said in a mobile phone text message on
Thursday. The company suspended output starting Monday, while concentrate
shipments remain unaffected from old stockpiles, said Juli Parorrongan, a
spokesman for Freeport Indonesia workers’ union.
The blockade
by about 50 workers wasn’t organized by the union and it isn’t aware of the
workers demand or the reason for the roadblock, Parorrongan said. The striking
workers from seven tribes in Papua are seeking promotion as incentives for not
participating in a labor dispute last year, Kompas.com reported on March 16.
“We
appreciate the workers’ rights to express their opinions,” Parorrongan said. “But
we hope all issues can be appropriately addressed without harming the company.”
Copper for
delivery in three months climbed as much as 2.8 percent to $5,830 a metric ton
on the London Metal Exchange.
Freeport
shares tumbled as much as 6.3 percent, the biggest intraday drop in seven
weeks. They closed 5.3 percent lower at $17.26 in New York.
Operations
at Grasberg in the mountainous region of Papua have been plagued by labor
strife in recent years. The mine saw a strike in 2011 as workers sought higher wages
and was closed for months following a tunnel collapse in 2013 that killed 28
workers. Exports were disrupted last year after a dispute with the Indonesian
government over export duties.
Primayanti
had said on Wednesday that the impact from the roadblock to mine operations was
insignificant.
Quelle: bigcharts.com
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