As Indonesia’s Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources declined to issue a recommendation for the extension of Newmont Nusa Tenggara’s export permit, operations at the Batu Hijau mine (an open-pit gold and copper mine located on the island of Sumbawa in the eastern part of Indonesia) have become uncertain. The six-month permit for copper concentrate exports of copper miner Newmont Nusa Tenggara, a unit of US-based Newmont Mining Corp, expired on Friday (18/09) and was not extended as the company failed to fulfill the government’s requirements regarding smelter development.

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Global copper prices can come under pressure as Newmont Nusa Tenggara (NNT) has started to export copper concentrate again this week after a nine-month hiatus caused by the dispute between the Indonesian government and NNT about Law No. 4 of 2009 on Mineral and Coal Mining (the “New Mining Law” of Indonesia), which sets high export taxes on unprocessed mineral exports (and stipulates a complete ban by 2017), in an effort to force Indonesian miners to build local processing facilities.

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