Can you give an overview of the recent activities at Freeport-McMoRan's El Abra mine?

The construction of our new leach pad has gone well, and we are currently finalizing and demobilizing the last of the contract workforce. We have been placing material on the leach pad for some time already, and our operation has been running well, returning to a 24/7 operation for the first time since the pandemic.

How can the mining industry take advantage of copper in waste?

Leaching is a relatively low-cost production driver, and we see an opportunity to leverage and advance leaching to enable us to grow our production profile with the minimum capital possible. Freeport-McMoRan's advantage is that we have decades of stockpiled material at our mines. We have been leaching some of this material and obtained a percentage of copper from those stockpiles. With traditional leaching technology, you could typically only extract 15% to 60% of the copper, depending on the mineralogy of the copper contained in the rock. We have approximately 38 billion pounds of copper still sitting in our stockpiles that previously were deemed unrecoverable.

This is a massive resource for us to go after with new leaching technologies, whether data analytics, artificial intelligence, or additives. At El Abra, we have identified an opportunity to use the same technology used in a third-party pilot study at one of our North American operations. We are defining the capital needs now and are hopeful to start construction of an on-site catalyst facility by the end of 2023 and see incremental copper production in 2024 or 2025.

Will El Abra utilize desalinated water in the future?

At El Abra we are still fed by continental water, but our water rights will expire toward the end of this decade. As part of our larger sulfide project, we had always contemplated the construction of a desalination plant. We are progressing with the permits and authorizations required to build a desalinization plant to serve the current El Abra operation.

What is Freeport-McMoRan's approach to utilizing innovative technologies and automation?

Freeport-McMoRan has been leveraging data, digitization, and innovation for some time. However, we have been disciplined about the fact that we do not want to innovate or automate just for technology's sake. Rather, the incorporation of technologies needs to be about driving value and improving the business. In 2018, we started leveraging AI and data analytics to help us optimize and maximize our production and efficiencies in the milling side of the business, which has since moved to other parts of the business.

How does the company prioritize ESG?

Freeport-McMoRan has been focused on all elements of ESG for a long time. For example, we built a new water treatment plant when we constructed the Cerro Verde mills. This plant was a win-win because it provides the city of Arequipa with treated water and at the same time, allows us to have water available for our operations.

We work extensively on community development initiatives and are particularly proud of our DreamBuilder program. DreamBuilder is a free online, entrepreneurship training program that equips women with the skills and confidence needed to become financially independent business owners. This program has reached more than 134,000 women around the world, including 9,000 in Chile. In 2022, we organized a conference in Chile for program graduates to hone their business skills, including sales techniques, female leadership and digital marketing.

We also are extremely proud of our work with the Antofagasta Industrial Association in building the Don Bosco Technical School in Calama, supporting the technical education of high school students seeking to enter the mining industry.

What is Freeport-McMoRan's strategy in Chile over the next few years?

We have continued to progress engineering and feasibility-type studies around the sulfide deposit at El Abra to identify the best path forward and decide when we want to activate the next phase. This robust resource creates the opportunity for a great future for El Abra and Freeport-McMoRan.

On a larger scale, our primary strategy is to leverage the assets that we currently own. Our push to leach our stockpiles is one facet of this strategy. We intend to stay focused on copper, leveraging our solid and pre-existing assets.