Ausenco partnered with Teck Resources on pipelines and port facilities to support the Phase 2 development of their Quebrada Blanca copper mine in northern Chile. Over the course of a remarkable 15-year relationship, teams from the Santiago and Vancouver offices were able to build a close relationship from pre-feasibility through to commissioning for the port facility, the1200l/s desalinated water pipeline and the 160 m3/h concentrate pipeline linking the Pacific with the high Andes. The tailings transport system and the water recovery system were also key work fronts.
The Challenge
Quebrada Blanca is an open pit copper/silver/molybdenum mine in the Tarapacá Region of northern Chile, first opened in 1994. Anticipating the exhaustion of the copper oxide ore body, Teck Resources undertook an expansion into the vast copper sulphide ore body below. The new concentrator plant would require one pipeline to bring desalinated water 165 km from the coast to the mine site 4,400m above sea level. Also, in the opposite direction another pipeline would require returning copper concentrate to port. Ausenco was engaged to develop the port facility for both desalination and concentrate loading, as well as the required 36” freshwater and 8” concentrate pipelines, tailings transport and water recovery.
The Better Way
Critical to the success of the project was our team’s close involvement with our client at every stage of the project—we partnering with Teck from “Day 0” allowed us to understand and be responsive to their needs efficiently during the journey. An ideal route was surveyed by helicopter, motorbike and on foot, and chosen to allow for the co-location of a high voltage line to be built by a separate provider. In 2010 we completed a feasibility study, with detailed engineering following in 2012. During an unplanned and unrelated 4-year work stoppage, we continued to modify designs to increase optimization and reduce costs for our client. When the engineering restarted in 2017, we were prepared to immediately move to the selection of contractors and vendors, as well as field engineering and providing support during construction. We have continued our long relationship on this project into the next phase, including overseeing commissioning of the processing plant and tailings facility, which were designed by others.
To achieve this close relationship, our pipeline project team was moved to an office near the client’s offices in Santiago during the detailed engineering phase of the project. This team was able to integrate seamlessly with our ports team in Vancouver. Many of our Chilean operations team members were trained in English early in the project, which allowed for important documents to be developed in this language, simplifying the process for our client.
The Outcome
The unprecedented length of our relationship with Teck Resources across the lifecycle of the project (over 250,000 work hours), is a testament to the power of many of Ausenco’s values—The client is our focus, Our people are our strength, and We are open, honest and collaborative. Our optimized designs have helped Teck achieve their goal of a 140,000 Kt/d operation, recovering much of the water used in tailings management, and using gravity where possible to keep energy costs low.
Our partnership with Teck continues as we move into a new stage of the project, culminating in our facility-wide commissioning role.