A Panamanian government commission publicly recommended an “orderly closure” of Cobre Panamá on Wednesday, hours after Reuters reported that the same body was expected to recommend restarting the mine through a state partnership with First Quantum Minerals.
Instead of endorsing the public-private restart structure that had been discussed for months, the commission told President José Raúl Mulino to establish conditions for a closure financed by the mine itself, with independent oversight and no cost to Panama’s treasury, La Estrella De Panama reports.
Commerce and Industry Minister Julio Moltó said the recommendation was to begin an orderly closure “without fiscal cost for Panama” and “without possibility of extensions.” He also cautioned that a project of Cobre Panamá’s scale could not be shut in one year, or even five.
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The recommendation is not a final government decision. Mulino still has authority to determine the next steps.
Earlier Wednesday, Reuters reported, citing two unnamed sources familiar with the matter, that the commission would recommend resuming operations through a joint venture with First Quantum. Reuters said a structure previously under discussion could give the Canadian miner a 60% to 65% stake and operational control while Panama retained the underlying concession.
This was first reported in July that Panama was considering creating a state-owned mining company as one possible route to reopening Cobre Panamá. Such an arrangement could potentially navigate a 2023 law prohibiting new mining concessions, although its legal treatment had not been settled.
The commission’s public presentation instead emphasized compliance with the Supreme Court ruling that struck down Law 406, which approved First Quantum’s mining contract. Moltó said the ruling “is fully complied with and is not under discussion in any line of this report.”
The economic cost remains substantial. The commission said more than 6,000 direct jobs and roughly 30,000 indirect jobs were lost after the mine’s 2023 shutdown, affecting an estimated 144,000 people. Economy and Finance Minister Felipe Chapman said Panama is losing about $3.8 million in production per day, while the government loses $1.3 million and the social security system another $390,000 daily.
Cobre Panamá has not returned to commercial mining. Panama authorized First Quantum in April to process stockpiled ore extracted before the shutdown, a program the company explicitly said did not constitute a mine reopening. First Quantum produced 3,216 tonnes of copper from that material in the second quarter after processing about 2.1 million tonnes of stockpiled ore.
The commission said the site should finance its own closure. Chapman said preservation and maintenance have so far been funded by resources generated from previously produced concentrate and ore mined before operations were halted.
