ASSESSING THE AVAILABILITY OF THE MINERAL RESOURCE BASE OF COPPER

The paper presents the results of studies on the reserves availability of copper-containing ores. Comparative analysis of the mineral resource bases of Russia, Chile, the USA and the world as a whole is carried out using cumulative availability curves. The curves represent a graph of cumulative volumes of proved mineral reserves, ranked by the degree of economic feasibility of their involvement in the development, depending on the estimated price for this type of mineral products. The estimated price is determined based on considerations of the minimum level of the development profitability. The authors propose an approach to determining the estimated price depending on the probabilities of deposits involvement in development. The approach is based on the construction of “content-reserves” diagrams for operated and reserve mineral deposits and can be used in conditions of limited availability of information about the parameters and conditions for the development of specific reserves. For the compared mineral resource bases, the sizes of economically available copper reserves have been established at present, the limits of possible increment in available reserves have been determined with favorable changes in the market position of mineral commodity markets and improvement of the extraction tehnology and processing of mineral raw materials.