Skip to main content

The Billion-Tonne Copper Project Nobody Knows About - Yet.

VRIC Media Sep 15, 2026 26:24

Summary

Tight physical copper market: smelter treatment charges have flipped from $90/ton to negative $150/ton, signaling acute supply stress.

Cyclical, short-term, and structural drivers are converging — declining capex, aging mines, AI-data-center build-out, and electrification all pulling on copper supply.

Oroco's Santo Tomas in Sinaloa is a billion-tonne near-surface copper porphyry in the Laramide Belt, with existing infrastructure (highway, rail, power, deepwater port).

The 2024 PEA outlines a 100,000-tpa copper operation over a 23-year mine life at $4 copper — roughly 40% below today's price — with NPV of $1.48B and capex of $1B.

A 20,000-metre drill program (completion pre-Christmas) is upgrading inferred resources ahead of a new MRE (~end of February 2027) and a PFS in Q2/Q3 2027.

Jay Martin's takeaways

  • Top takeaway Argues copper is at a structural inflection driven by 20 years of underinvestment, TCRCs flipping from ~$90/ton to negative $150/ton in some areas, and surging AI and electrification demand — about 60% of the $760B in annual AI capex flows to raw materials — so the 2018 'Cupboard is Nearly Bare' thesis he co-authored at RFC Ambrian is now materializing before the full deficits hit.
  • Frames Oroco's Santo Tomas as sharply mispriced: a 2024 PEA NPV of $1.48B at $4 copper (40% below the then-spot price) versus a market cap of ~$170M, attributing the discount to legacy anti-mining rhetoric around Mexico rather than the asset, and expects the gap to close as new open-pit permits and Plan Mexico inclusion are recognized.
  • Argues Mexico's adjacency to the United States is a strategic advantage, not a risk — in a bifurcated West/East supply chain world, 'proximity to a hegemon' reduces jurisdictional uncertainty versus countries caught between trading blocs.
  • Casts Oroco's new CEO appointment as a deliberate 'go-to-market' pivot, with the 20,000-metre drill program finishing by year-end 2026, an updated mineral resource estimate due February 2027, and a PFS targeted for Q2/Q3 2027 serving as leverage points for inbound M&A interest from majors looking to refill their pipelines.