Vale Plans Feasibility Study for Copper Cliff Deep Nickel Project

Reuters reported that Vale SA’s (NYSE:VALE) Canadian unit is now working on its Sudbury Basin-based Copper Cliff Deep nickel project once again and hopes to have a feasibility study ready by the end of 2014.

As quoted in the market news:

The project is expected to cost somewhere in the range of a billion dollars to build and could be one of the unit’s lower-cost operations, said Kelly Strong, Vale’s vice president of Ontario and UK operations.

If it goes ahead, the revised project, now dubbed Copper Cliff Mine, would be another boost for the Sudbury basin in northern Ontario, where Vale recently opened Totten, its first new mine in more than 40 years.

‘It’s going to look a little bit different than the original project – it’s going to be three phases,’ said Strong.

The project would merge and expand what are now two separate mines. Its earlier incarnation was put on hold in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In 2010, Vale Canada said it was re-evaluating the project, though work did not proceed.

Click here to read the full Reuters report.