MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Chile: Billiton defers copper expansion project, axes 2.000 jobs

The world's largest diversified mining corporation, Anglo-Australian BHP Billiton announced on Wednesday 6.000 job cuts, 2.000 of which at operations in copper mines in Chile following the decision to defer expansion projects.

Billiton said the 6.000 job losses globally are forced by cut costs in the face of a commodity price slump amid a global financial crisis. This represents 6% of its 100.000 global work force, 40% permanent staff and 60%, contract workers. According to a report from Reuters, Ruban Yogarajah, a Billiton spokesman in London, said most of the Chile job cuts had already been implemented as major expansion projects had been deferred: "it's primarily contractors, 84% of them are contractors, which is approximately 2.000". In Chile, Billiton had about 6.000 full-time staff and 12.000 contract workers in operations and projects before the reduction. The company operates the Escondida, Spence and Cerro Colorado mines in northern Chile. Chile is the world's largest copper producer, supplying about a third of global markets. The copper industry chamber in Chile estimates planned investments in Chilean copper are down 25% in dollar terms since September alone, with most of that due to deferred projects at Billiton's Escondida mine. Escondida has postponed a decision for its Phase Five expansion of the giant mine for at least 18 months, and cut back on plans to build a massive, 3.5 billion US dollars plant to desalinate sea water for mineral processing. Diego Hernandez, BHP Billiton's president for base metal operations, told journalists in Santiago a decision would be made by the end of the year on new plans to build a plant with half the original capacity intended. "A decision will be made by the end of the year on a 1,600-liters-per-second (plant)," Hernandez said. "The plant is linked to (processing) current production capacity, not added production capacity".