A thick layer of clouds obscures the sky and a heavy tropical rain falls on this open pit copper mine operated by the Canadian company First Quantum Minerals.

From the air, the huge blast hole one kilometer in diameter dug in the ocher rock contrasts with the thick surrounding vegetation.

The activity of the site, which began in February 2019, could however stop in a few days...

The president of Panama, Laurentino Cortizo, has given an ultimatum to the Toronto-listed company to accept a new concession contract, which would multiply by ten the taxes due to the country to be able to operate the mine.

"They gave us a deadline of December 14," the company's director in Panama, Keith Green, a former Scottish diplomat, told AFP.

"We intend to reach an agreement, but the negotiation is a bit blocked," admits this former official of the British Foreign Office.

If the company refuses the terms of the new contract, it will have to cease its activities in the country after having invested more than 10 billion dollars between earthworks, construction of a power plant, a port, housing for its 7,200 employees or the purchase of heavy machinery.

The Donoso copper mine, Panama, December 6, 2022 © Luis ACOSTA / AFP

President Cortizo announced on January 18 his intention to tighten the operating conditions of the site.

With the new contract, the Canadian company should pay some 375 million dollars per year to the Panamanian State, ten times more than until now.

"Panama has the inalienable right to receive fair revenues for the extraction of its mineral resources, because the copper is Panamanian," argued President Cortizo.

75% of exports

The mine is "the largest in Central America" ​​and produces 300,000 tons of copper concentrate per year, says Mr. Green.

It contributes up to 75% of Panama's export earnings and represents 4% of its gross domestic product (GDP), he says.

The production of this copper deposit, discovered in 1968 240 km from the capital, leaves the country from the port of Punta Rincon, an infrastructure built by the Canadian company in the face of the lack of roads to reach the port of Colon, located 40 km away.

Despite the threat to the future of the mine, the Canadian company continues to operate and make investments.

A new drilling rig, made in the United States by the Swedish company Epiroc, was inaugurated on Tuesday at a ceremony attended by many guests after a helicopter flight from the capital's Albrook airport, a former air base from when the United States controlled the canal.

The Donoso copper mine, Panama, December 6, 2022 © Luis ACOSTA / AFP

The imposing machine of 200 tons cost some six million dollars.

"There are 200 of these drills in Latin America, including 50 in Chile and now three in Panama," said Hans Traub, head of Epiroc for Latin America, to AFP.

Arrived at the port of Punta Rincon by boat and transported to the mine by 10 trucks, it was then assembled under the direction of Chilean engineer Alex Gonzalez, who previously worked at Chuquicamata, the largest open-pit copper mine. in the world, located in the Atacama Desert, in northern Chile, and whose operation began in 1915.

But Central America does not have the same mining tradition: the extraction of minerals from the earth is illegal in Costa Rica, as well as in El Salvador, and is struggling in Panama.

A legacy perhaps of the Mayan peoples, who did not attach importance to gold...

© 2022 AFP