History
The prospector Charles Senter discovered and claimed the outcropping of molybdenite (molybdenum sulfide) veins in 1879, during the Leadville, Colorado, Silver Boom, but he had no idea what the mineral he found was. Senter quickly determined that the rock contained no gold or silver, but he kept the claims anyway. The following year he settled down to live with his Ute Indian wife in a cabin a few miles north, and he made a living working a nearby gold placer. Each year he faithfully did the assessment work required to keep his lode claims, convinced that his mystery mineral must be worth something and in 1918 Senter finally received $40,000 for his mining claims and "settled into a comfortable retirement in Denver."
Although Senter finally found a chemist who identified the gray mineral as containing molybdenum in 1895, at the time there was virtually no market for the metal. When steelmakers found the usefulness of molybdenum as an alloy in producing very hard steel, the first ore shipments from the deposit began in 1915, and the Climax mine began full production in 1914. The main ore bearing area was Bartlett Mountain, which was mined out during the early mining. But the demand for molybdenum fell drastically at the end of World War I, and the Climax mine shut down in 1919. Molybdenum later found use in the metal alloys for the turbines of jet engines.
The Climax Molybdenum Company re-opened the mine in 1924, and it operated the mine nearly continuously until the 1980s. The mine has been shut down since 1995, awaiting higher molybdenum prices. The mine's current owner, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, continues to work on environmental cleanup of past operations while holding the mine ready in the event of market changes.
In December 2007 Freeport-McMoRan reported that it planned to reopen the Climax mine and that production should start in 2010. An initial $500-million project involves the restart of open-pit mining and construction of state-of-the-art milling facilities. The company stated that the Climax mine has "... the largest, highest-grade and lowest-cost molybdenum ore body in the world.". The remaining ore reserves are estimated to contain about 500 million pounds of molybdenum, contained in ore at an average molybdenum percentage of 0.165%. Production was expected to be about 30 million pounds per year, starting in 2010.
However, Freeport-McMoRan announced in November 2008 that it had deferred plans to reopen the Climax mine, due to lower molybdenum prices. The company had spent about $200 million preparing for a restart of the mine, with an estimated $350 million more needed to reopen. After a 17-year shutdown, the Climax mine has reopened and resumed shipment of molybdenum on May 10, 2012.
Read more about this topic: Climax Mine
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