LEADVILLE — Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold Inc. is looking to restart operations at the historic Climax molybdenum mine next year, chief executive Richard Adkerson said Thursday. The company also said that second-quarter earnings more than doubled as it produced and sold more copper and gold.
Hundreds of contract workers have been involved in a $700 million project to get the mine reopened.
The mine in Leadville has been on maintenance status since 1995. It shuttered in 1987 after molybdenum prices plummeted.
Freeport acquired Climax and the Henderson molybdenum mine near Empire in 2007 when it bought Phelps Dodge Corp.
“We’re very excited about that,” Lake County Commissioner Mike Bordogna said. “We don’t want to be overly optimistic, but we do feel it’s a very encouraging sign.”
Adkerson told analysts in a conference call that the company expects to phase in production at Climax with about 10 million pounds in 2012 and increase to about 20 million pounds a year by 2013.
Phoenix-based Freeport hired miners for Climax last year and is now looking to hire operators, he said.
Freeport-McMoRan reported net income of $1.37 billion, or $1.43 a share, for the three months ended June 30. That compared with $649 million, or 70 cents a share, for the same period last year.
Excluding losses, Freeport-McMoRan earned $1.49 a share.
Revenue increased 50.5 percent to $5.81 billion.
The results beat Wall Street estimates of $1.33 a share, according to a survey by FactSet.
