Panama has not authorized visits to the Cobre Panama copper mine

Reuters

Tue, Mar 25, 2025, 7:14 PM 1 min read

PANAMA CITY (Reuters) - Panama has not authorized visits to First Quantum's shuttered Cobre Panama mine, the country's Ministry of Commerce and Industry said successful a connection connected Tuesday.

"Any introduction of 3rd parties to those facilities has been managed unilaterally by the company, without the information oregon endorsement of the National Government," the ministry said.

The connection was shared connected X by Minister Julio Molto and stated that Panama's authorities is "in the process of contracting a broad audit, which aims to technically and objectively measure the existent authorities of operations and their interaction connected the environment."

Panama's connection comes aft First Quantum announced connected Monday a programme of visits to the Cobre Panama copper mining site, which has been unopen since 2023 amid an biology quality with the country, to circuit the site.

The Panamanian authorities believes the nationalist visits whitethorn impact the impartiality of immoderate investigation of the Cobre tract and the existing supplies of copper ore there.

Before its shutdown, the excavation was 1 of the world's apical sources of copper, accounting for 1% of planetary output.

(Reporting by Elida Monero; Writing by Natalia Siniawski; Editing by Aida Pelaez-Fernandez and Christian Schmollinger)