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PT Freeport Indonesia has restarted underground mining operations at its Grasberg mine, two months after a tunnel collapse led to suspension of operations.

PT Freeport Indonesia is in talks with state-owned power enterprises and other companies over the economic viability of building a new copper smelter, a company spokeswoman said.

Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold Inc. and Codelco, the world’s two largest copper producers, said China’s plans to curb its economy threaten to reduce demand for the metal after prices slumped 15 percent in two months. The copper market will be “volatile” for as much as another year after China took measures to cool its property market, Codelco Chief Executive Officer Diego Hernandez said yesterday in an interview at Bloomberg headquarters in New York. The Asian nation is a “risk to the world’s market place in the near term,” Freeport CEO Richard Adkerson said in an interview.

Mining giant Freeport-McMoRan has bought the long-closed Twin Buttes Mine site near Sahuarita for $200 million and may mine it once again, company officials said. Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. bought 8,900 acres of the open-pit mine

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. is looking to sell its large Candelaria copper mine in Chile, an asset sale that could raise several billion dollars, according to people familiar with the matter. The mine has attracted interest from Magris Resources Inc., a Toronto-based mining-investment vehicle headed by former Barrick Gold Corp. chief executive Aaron Regent, according to these people. Phoenix-based Freeport, which...

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold will increase daily ore output at its Deep Ore Zone Grasberg Mine in Indonesia to 80,000 tonnes per day by the end of 2013. This will be a 60% increase from the 2012 rate of around 50,000 tpd, which will help bring 2013 copper sales to 1.1 billion lb.

An eleventh-hour adjustment for copper will allow miners such as Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold and Newmont Mining to continue shipments. The regulation will allow exports of copper concentrate above or equal to 15% metal content. About 66 companies that have plans to process domestically will be allowed to export as well, Jero Wacik, energy and mines minister, told local reporters in Indonesia.

The consensus among analysts is that the copper market could show a surplus of about 200,000-300,000 tonnes in 2014, after recording a narrower surplus this year. In the context of the 21 million-tonne refined copper market, the surplus is relatively modest, and it could be offset quickly if there is a further deterioration in the supply of scrap, Freeport McMoRan svp of sales and marketing Javier Targhetta told Metal Bulletin in Shanghai.

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold is planning big acquisitions in the oil and gas sector, a multibillion-dollar move that would take the US mining group back to its roots as an energy producer, according to several people familiar with the matter.