Mining in Chile
The mining sector in Chile has historically been and continues to be one of the pillars of the Chilean economy. Mining in Chile is concentrated in 14 mining districts, all of them in the northern half of the country and in particular in the Norte Grande region spanning most of the Atacama Desert.
Chile was, in 2024, the world's largest producer of copper, iodine and rhenium, the second largest producer of lithium, the third largest producer of molybdenum, the seventh largest producer of silver, and salt, the eighth largest producer of potash, the thirteenth producer of sulfur and the fourteenth producer of iron ore in the world. In the production of gold, between 2006 and 2017, the country produced annual quantities ranging from 35.9 tons in 2017 to 51.3 tons in 2013.
In 2021 mining taxes stood for 19% of the Chilean state's incomes. Mining stood for about 14% of gross domestic product but by estimates including economic activity linked to mining it stood for 20% of GDP. About 3% of Chile's workforce work in mines and quarries but in a wider sense about 10% of the country's employment is linked to mining.
The governance of mining in Chile is done by non-overlapping bodies; the Chilean Copper Commission, ENAMI, the National Geology and Mining Service and the Ministry of Mining. SONAMI and Consejo Minero are guilds associations grouping corporate mining interests in Chile. Chile's National Statistics Institute reports on the state of the mining industry through the montly publication of the Mining Production Index.
Some challenges of the Chilean mining industry come from overall mine aging, remoteness and harsh climatic conditions of mining in the high Andes, and increased water demand coupled with water scarcity. Other challenges are related to increasingly complex legal frameworks or the fact that important mineral deposits lie below or next to glaciers along the Argentina–Chile border and have thus both issues relating to the bi-nationality and of environmental impacts on glaciers and rock glaciers.
Copper
Chile is the world's largest producer of copper and has been so uninterruptedly since 1983. This activity provides a substantial part of the Chilean state's revenue: slightly less than 6% in 2020, with state-owned copper company Codelco alone generating 2.6% of state revenue.Mining of copper in Chile is done chiefly on giant low-grade porphyry copper deposits. As of 2023 the most productive copper mine is Escondida owned by BHP, Rio Tinto and two other private companies and located in inland Antofagasta Region.
Part of the state's income from copper mining goes to the Economic and Social Stabilization Fund which is since 207 the successor to the Copper Stabilization Fund established in 1987. This fund allows for more precise annual government budget planning given that copper prices can exhibit strong fluctuations.
Lithium
Northern Chile forms part of the Lithium Triangle with substantial reserves in the form of brine. The explosive growth in electric vehicles since 2015 has triggered increased demand.Chile is the main producer of lithium from brine. Until 2017, when it was surpassed by Australia, Chile was the over-all main producer of lithium. Estimates show that Chile is expected to be surpassed also by Argentina and China in lithium production by 2030. Lithium-expert Gustavo Lagos suggests that lithium production in Chile will by 2030 represent be about 8% of the world's total production. Chile has the world's cheapest production costs for lithium and this could be an advantage for mining in Chile once recycled lithium enters the market competing with costly mining operations in the future.
Most of Chile's lithium reserves are in Salar de Atacama and Salar de Maricunga, and all lithium extracted in Chile as of 2023 comes from Salar de Atacama. The only two lithium-extracting companies currently operating in Chile, SQM and Albemarle, have licences to extract lithium until 2030 and 2043 respectively. In April 2023 Chilean government announced plans for nationalizing its lithium industry. The state-owned copper company Codelco was commissioned by the government to negotiate nationalization with SQM.
Gold
The amount of gold mined in Chile has fluctuated in the 2010–2023 period from a high of 50.852 kg in 2013 to a low of 30,907 kg in 2022. Also in the same period 36% to 72% of the gold produced annually in Chile was a by-product of copper mining. The share of medium and small-scale mining in gold production in Chile has dropped from an average of 45% for the 2003–2005 period to 9% in 2023.Most of the economically viable gold deposits in Chile belong to two types of deposits; high-sulfidation epithermal and porphyry type. Most of these deposits formed in the last 66 millions years in connection to magmatic activity in the Andes. Gold from iron oxide copper gold ore deposits, from mesothermal deposits, or of Mesozoic age may in some cases be recurrent geological features but lack often large concentrations to make them profitable. Almost all valuable non-placer gold in Chile occur in the northern half of the country and some deposits are grouped into belts like the Maricunga Gold Belt and El Indio Gold Belt.
Almost no mining of placer gold occurs today. The placer deposits of some areas of difficult access in Patagonia are subject to sporadic small-scale illegal gold mining. A 2019 study found that seven of Chile's ten best placer gold prospects lie around Cordillera de Nahuelbuta.
Iron
Since at least 2010 Chile's has each year produced 0.6% to 0.7% of all iron mined in the world. Production has risen from 6.8 million metric tonnes in 2010 to more than 10 million metric tonnes each year beginning 2021. Mining of iron ore deposits along the Chilean Iron Belt have been facilitated by their proximity to the ports of export at the coast, and this had in particular had an impact for the economic viability of small iron ore deposits. Compañía Minera del Pacífico is largest iron mining company in Chile. Is through its parent company Compañía de Acero del Pacífico a member of Consejo Minero, a guild of large mining companies in the country. Compañia Minera del Pacífico has three main mines each with its own port for export. Near Copiapó the company owns Cerro Negro Norte mine which uses the port of Punta Totoralillo, further south the company is in ownership of Los Colorados mine which uses the port of Guacolda II, and near the city of La Serena El Romeral mine is operated using the port of Guayacán in Coquimbo.In medium-scale iron mining in Chile the mines and deposits of El Carmen, Huantemé, Cerro Imán and El Dorado have been important in the second half of the 20th century.
The Dominga project led by Andes Iron seeks to establish a new iron and copper mine near the coast of northern Coquimbo Region. This project has proved controversial for political and environmental reasons.
Iodine and nitrate
In the Atacama Desert in northern Chile there are vast superficial deposits of caliche, a mixture of gypsum, sodium chloride and other salts, and sand. It is associated to the mineral nitratine also known as "Chile saltpeter". The deposits contain an average of 7.5% sodium nitrate, as well as sodium sulfate, sodium chloride, and smaller amounts of potassium, calcium, magnesium, borate, iodine, and perchlorate. About two-thirds of the deposits are insoluble gangue minerals. The caliche beds are from 2 cm to several meters thick in alluvial deposits, where the soluble minerals form a cement in unconsolidated regolith. Nitrate-bearing caliche is also found permeating bedrock to form bedrock deposits.Nitratine is a composite of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate. Nitratine was an important source of export revenue for Chile until World War I, when Europe began to produce both nitrates industrially in large quantities. Mining nitrate in the Far North of Chile was arguably the main economic activity of the country from 1880 to 1930.
Caliche is the main iodine ore in Chile and the country is the world's prime producer of this element in addition to hosting over half of the worlds reserves of iodine. SQM and Cosayach are Chile's first and second largest iodine producers. Iodine at SQM is extracted from caliche ore and requires also the consumables sulphur, ammonium nitrate, sulfuric acid, kerosene, water, electricity and fossil fuel, mainly diesel.
Other minerals
Since the late 1970s, the production of gold and silver has increased greatly. The lead, iron and petroleum industries have shrunk since the mid-1970s, the result of both adverse international market conditions and declines in the availability of some of these resources. With a combined total value of about US$4 billion, two of the largest investments planned in Chile in the early 1990s were designated for an aluminium smelters projects in the Puerto Aisén and Strait of Magellan areas.In the 2005–2024 period more than half of the silver produced annually in Chile was a by-product of copper mining.
There is no primary mining of cobalt in Chile with the last activity ending in 1944. Cobalt resources are known from the Chilean Iron Belt near the coast of Coquimbo and Atacama regions and in the site of El Volcán in Cajón del Maipo in the Andes near Santiago. Cobalt is a potential by-product of iron and copper mining along the iron belt. It is known to be found in considerable concentrations among discarded material –mainly tailings– of copper, iron and gold mining in Chile. Capstone Copper's mines of Mantoverde and Santo Domingo are thought to be able to produce battery-grade cobalt.
There is no manganese mining in Chile since 2009 when Empresa Manganeso Atacama ceased operations. Until then about half of the Chilean manganese had been exported to Argentina, and mining was mainly done in underground mines. Historically Corral Quemado and other areas of Coquimbo Region have produced most manganese in Chile. Manganese mining in Chile and Corral Quemado had a strong peak in 1943 when it came to produce more of what was being purchased leading to large stockpiles accumulating in ports and railway stations and ultimately to a halt in mining and thus mass unemployment. Transport costs have been a comparative disadvantage for the commercialization of manganese mined in Chile. The area around Taltal was second to Corral Quemado in importance in manganese mining in the 1940s. Known manganese deposits are scattered along the length of Chile from Arica to Valdivia. In detail, the known manganese deposits concentrate in three areas; the Altiplano in northernmost Chile, the Coquimbo and Atacama regions and the metasedimentary rocks of the provinces of Cautín and Valdivia. In the regions of Coquimbo and Atacama manganese appear as stratabound layers in the Cretaceous volcanic and sedimentary formations of Arqueros and Quebrada Marquesa. In Arqueros Formation it occurs in some locations together with stratabound copper. By 1964 87% of the magnesium mined in Chile came from these formations in Coquimbo Region.
Historically, coal mining had some importance in the southern half of the country from the 1850s to the 1990s with a brief revival in Invierno mine from 2013 to 2020.