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Freeport underground mining activities (Photo source: Freeport Indonesia)
JAKARTA (rambuenergy.com) – Mimika Regency government, Papua Province, is offering PT Freeport Indonesia larger land plot in Mimika as an effort to lure the copper and gold company to build a copper smelter in the area.
Mimika Regency head Eltinus Omaleng told reporters after meeting with the Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Sudirman Said on Friday said that the regency government offers 200 hectares of land for Freeport to build the smelter, larger than the plot of land available in Gresik, East Java of 80 hectares.
Freeport Indonesia has said that the company preferred to build a smelter plant in Gresik for various reasons, including the availability of power plant to provide electricity to the smelter plant as well as other supporting infrastructures.
(Photo: ESDM)
Energy Minister Sudirman Said briefed the press after receiving Papua local governments
In response to the Freeport’s need, The Mimika Regency Head said that the local government has a plan to build hydro power plant in Mimika with a capacity to generate 600 megawatt of electricity. Of this capacity, 300 MW would be allocated for Freeport’s smelter and the remaining electricity will be set aside for other smelters in other regencies.
In addition, the Papua Provincial governor Lukas Enembe has requested the central government to allocate 10 percent of Freeport shares to local governments. “We want 10 percent of shares,” Enembe said, as quoted by Bisnis Indonesia.
PT Freeport Indonesia has agreed to divest 30 percent of Freeport shares to the Indonesian parties. Currently, the government of Indonesia holds 9.36 percent shares.
In the first phase, PT Freeport Indonesia is scheduled to divest 10.64 percent of shares by October this year and the remaining 10 percent will be divested within five years in line with the Government Regulation. Sudirman said, the energy minister, has recommended the government to buy the first part of the divesture through nickel and gold state owned company (BUMN), either PT Aneka Tambang Tbk.
The energy minister said the central government wants to ensure that the land is available that will aid Freeport Indonesia in determining whether to go ahead building a copper smelter in Gresik or changing its mind to build the smelter in Mimika, Papua, adjacent to the company’s mining site.(*)
