Xstrata Copper is the fourth largest global copper producer.  Xstrata plc is an international mining company, listed on both the London Stock Exchange (LSE: XTA) and the SWX Swiss Exchange. Its headquarters are in Zug in Switzerland and it is a member of the FTSE 100 Index. Since the turn of the millennium it has developed from a small player into one of the world’s largest diversified mining groups with the help of a series of large acquisitions. It has major operations/projects in eighteen countries (Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Jamaica, New Caledonia, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Tanzania, the United States and the United Kingdom) and it is a major producer of copper, coking coal, thermal coal, nickel, ferrochrome, vanadium and zinc. It has smaller scale involvement in aluminum, gold, lead and silver.

Nov. 3, 2012 Updates: Excerpts: Mark Williams, general manager for external affairs of Sagittarius Mines Inc, Xstrata’s local unit, told reporters Thursday that it expected Aquino to meet a government-imposed deadline for giving the project’s go-ahead.

But presidential spokesman Ricky Carandang said the timetable would likely not be met because the person overseeing the government’s review, Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, died in a plane crash last month. Sagittarius (local unit) has plowed $350 million on the $5.9 billion Tampakan project, which it describes as one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper-gold deposits. If allowed to proceed, Williams said it would generate $7.2 billion in tax revenues for the Philippine government over 20 years.