Panama will allow controversial mine to export already mined copper to fund maintenance WSOC TV [Video]

PANAMA CITY — (AP) — Panama will allow a controversial mine that was closed after months of protests to export more than 120,000 tons of already mined copper concentrate to pay the costs of maintaining the inactive mine site, government officials announced Friday.

Opposition to the massive copper mine led to some of Panama’s most widespread protests in recent years before the country’s Supreme Court rejected a deal that allowed a Canadian company to operate it.

Toronto-based First Quantum Minerals said Friday that exporting the material that’s sitting at the site will fund maintenance and environmental protection measures.

Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino called for those steps in March, when business groups were lobbying him to reopen the mine. Income from the mine accounted for nearly 5% of Panama gross domestic product the last year it operated.

“The purpose is to avoid, above all else, environmental damage,” Trade and Industry Minister Julio Moltó said Friday. He emphasized that the mine was not …