Russia’s VEB to spend $100 mln to finance Udokan filed pre-FEED

MOSCOW, Jan 13 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Vnesheconombank (VEB) plans to use about U.S. $100 million of the National Wealth Fund’s money in 2017 to finance pre–front end engineering and design (pre-FEED) works at the Udokan copper field, VEB CEO Sergei Gorkov told reporters on Friday.

“The supervisory board has approved it, it was done rather a long time ago. This is not a large sum, slightly more than $100 million, which will be spent on finishing the pre-FEED,” he said.

“The project was approved and I hope it will be implemented this year.”

He said the bank will use the National Wealth Fund’s money to finance the project.

In November 2019, VEB said it planned to leave the Udokan copper field project after the pre-FEED stage is finished.

The Udokan copper field is one of the world’s largest with reserves estimated at 2.3 billion tonnes with the copper content of 1.06%, or the copper reserves of 24.6 million tonnes under the JORC code

The facility which is to be constructed at the field will have an ore processing capacity of 36 million tonnes per year. The project’s operator is Baikal Mining Company.

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