operations higher than 4,000 meters, daily rainfall, and situated in some of the strangest and most forbidding terrain in the world, this mine stands as one of the greatest engineering achievements of our time.
It is also—quite literally—a gold mine for its owners, Freeport Indonesia, majority owned by Freeport-McMoRan in Louisiana. In addition to billions of pounds of copper reserves, making it one of the five largest copper mines in the world, a recently discovered deposit now gives the mine the single largest gold reserve of any mine in the world: 27 million ounces.
[Note: Visitors are not welcome at any of the Freeport installations. Only the head office in Jakarta grants permits to tour the areas, and these are granted for professional reasons only.]
A mountain of ore
The story begins with a jet-black outcropping of ore discovered in 1936 by Dutch geologist Jean Jacques Dozy. Literally a mountain of copper, Ertsberg ("ore mountain" in Dutch) stood 179 meters above a grassy meadow, 3,500 meters up in the highest part of West Papua's rugged cordillera. High-grade ore lurked in the rock below to a depth of 360 meters. Ertsberg—or Gunung Bijih (also "Ore Mountain") as it later came to be called—was so exposed because the softer rock surrounding it had been carved away by glaciers. This was the largest above-ground copper deposit in the world.
The Freeport mines have already provided the world with 3 billion pounds of copper. The Gunung Bijih deposit, which harbored 33 million metric tons of ore, has been exhausted, and all that remains is a pit. But three additional deposits have been discovered just a stone's throw from Gunung Bijih: Gunung Bijih Timur (including two separate deposits), Dom (Dutch for "cathedral," a hill of marble), and the greatest prize of all, Grasberg (Dutch for "grass mountain").
The 91 kilometer road to Tembagapura was painstakingly cut by flown-in bulldozers.
And the future is very bright for Freeport. As of 1991, proven reserves at the mine total 447 million metric tons of ore, estimated to yield 14 billion pounds of copper, 19 million ounces of gold, and 35 million ounces of silver. At current rates of extraction, this means an annual revenue of $800 million, more than $1 million per day in profit.
Mining costs are relatively high at Freeport, now averaging 46¢ per pound of saleable copper, and falling copper prices have at times made the mine temporarily unprofitable. But now that copper stands near $1 per pound, the mine earns Freeport more than $1 million a day.
'Copper City'
Mine workers live in Tembagapura—"Copper City"—a company town of 8,700 people nestled in a 1850-meter-high valley near the ore deposits. The setting is stunning, with the western flank of Mount Zaagham providing a spectacular backdrop.
A melting pot of ethnic groups labors in the mines. A Javanese welds and reshapes the huge steel teeth of a monstrous ore crusher. A Buginese from Sulawesi checks the rollers under a long conveyor belt that brings blasted chunks of ore to the crusher. A highland West Papuan rewires a complicated fuse-box. And a team of two men from Biak efficiently maneuvers a pneumatic drill at the far end of a side tunnel to prepare a section for blasting.
Freeport employs about 6,900 people, of whom 92 percent are Indonesians. Of these, 13 percent—about 900—are native West Papuans. The company has been criticized for the relatively low number of West Papuans working there, although training programs are beginning to show improved results.
For the workers, Tembagapura is pleasant, but remote. As an Irish expat said: "All you have to think about is your work—everything else is laid out for you." And very well laid out, with modern homes following the gentle slope of the creek-split valley. After a heavy rain, and 7,600 millimeters fall each year, 50 waterfalls spring from the tropical vegetation or bare rock on the vertical face of Mount Zaagham.
Facilities at Tembagapura include schools, tennis courts, a soccer field, a complete indoor sports complex, the latest videotapes, a subsidized store, clubs and bars—including the so-called "animal bar," frequented by workers. Hard liquor is taboo, but copious quantities of beer are served.
Tram cars at the Freeport mine carry 11-17 metric tons of ore at a time along the world's longest single-span tramway to the refining plant below.
Gunung Bijih, a mountain of nearly pure copper ore, has been exhausted, leaving an open pit. But half a billion tons of ore remain.
Supplies to Tembagapura must be trucked in over a steep, narrow gravel road from Timika, 75 kilometers away in the lowlands. Just keeping the men fed is a major feat of engineering. For example, Tembagapura requires 110 metric tons of rice a month, 88 metric tons of meat, and 33 metric tons of fish. The men eat a hearty breakfast, and require 91,000 eggs every day. (Freeport's fleet of trucks uses up 200 tires a week.)
Within the relatively narrow valley, real estate is at a premium. This means that many of the married workers cannot bring their families to Tembagapura, which makes for a lot of lonely men. It was once suggested that some ladies of pleasure be "imported" and periodically checked for disease—a practice in many Indonesian company towns. But the idea was shot down.
Tembagapura has changed drastically since the early days, when a German visitor exclaimed, "Mein Gott, Stalag 17." But it is still an isolated, tight-knit community. As a Javanese jokingly said, "Irian is the Siberia of Indonesia." He was referring to being so far from home, cut off from familiar surroundings. But in Tembagapura, he could also have been referring to the cold weather. The camps of Siberia never had the creature comforts of this town, however.
Most of the Indonesians at Tembagapura are content with their lot. They work hard—9 hours a day, 6 days a week—but they get paid quite well, and they get 5 weeks off each year, with the company paying the airfare home.
Ertsberg rediscovered
In the early 1950s, Forbes Wilson, chief exploration geologist for Freeport Sulphur of Louisiana, was conducting some library research on possible mining areas. He chanced across a report by Jean Jacques Dozy, published in 1939 by the University of Leiden, but subsequently forgotten in the upheavals of World War II. Although the report stated that it would be hard to imagine a more difficult place to find an ore deposit, Wilson was thrilled.
"My reaction was immediate," Wilson said. "I was so excited I could feel the hairs rising on the back of my neck."
Wilson was determined to view the marvel himself and to take enough samples to determine if mining operations would be justified. In 1936 it had taken Dozy 57 days to reach Ertsberg after a parachute drop.
Taking advantage of post-World War II U.S. military organization and financing from Freeport, Wilson sent in an advance party and hopped on a chartered plane from Biak. He landed on the south coast of what was then Dutch New Guinea. The landing strip was a former Japanese airfield used for bombing raids on Darwin, Australia.
Wilson's party canoed as far upstream as possible, then hiked in with mountain West Papuans who, paid in axes and machetes, served as porters. The porters, the mining engineer writes, ate "anything that walks, creeps or crawls," including humans, which they called "long pigs" and found much juicier than pork.
A skilled West
