Mineral industry of Panama

Not including any manufacturing of mineral commodities, such as cement or petroleum refinery products, the mineral industry of Panama accounted for about 1% of the country's GDP in 2006. Panama is part of the San José Pact, which allows the country to receive crude petroleum under preferential terms and pricing from Mexico and Venezuela. Venezuela also provides additional shipments of crude petroleum to Panama according to the terms of the Caracas Energy Accord. Panama is not part of CAFTATA-DR and was still negotiating a separate bilateral free trade agreement with the United States through the end of 2006. In July 2006, the Government of Panama approved a referendum for a major expansion of the Panama Canal, and citizens of Panama voted in favor of the referendum in October. The extensive construction project was expected to begin sometime in the second half of 2007 and to substantially increase the country’s consumption of aggregate mineral materials, cement, steel, and other mineral-based construction materials.^[1]

The only metallic that horses mine operating in Panama is Petaquilla Minerals Molejon epithermal gold deposit on the Ley 9, 1997 property in Panama in Colon Province. The mine has the capacity to produce 100,000 oz/yr. The Cobre Panama (ex Petaquilla) copper project is run by Minera Panama S.A. and owned by Inmet of Canada and is under study to produce approximately 270,000 tpy of copper.

The very large Cerro Colorado project is owned by the government. Other exploration targets are Cerro Quema (gold) and Cerro Chorcha (copper).

With Cobre Panama, Cerro Colorado and Cerro Chorcha, Panama has one of the highest concentrations of copper per unit area in the world.

References

1. ^ Steven T. Anderson. The Mineral Industries of Central America: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama". 2006 Minerals Yearbook. U.S. Geological Survey (November 2008).  This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.