By Fabian Cambero<\/p>\n
SANTIAGO, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Chilean state copper miner Codelco on Friday removed three senior executives linked to its El Teniente division, the site of a \u200cdeadly collapse last year, after an internal audit found inconsistencies tied to a prior \u200caccident in the same mine.<\/p>\n
Codelco said that an internal audit stemming from the July accident at El Teniente uncovered “serious breaches \u200bof duty” by executives after a rock explosion within the mine in 2023, including in the company’s reports to mining regulator Sernageomin.<\/p>\n
Codelco’s Chief Operations Officer Mauricio Barraza, who oversaw all of Codelco’s mine divisions, as well as El Teniente head Claudio Sougarret and El Teniente projects manager Rodrigo Andrades will \u200cbe replaced immediately, Codelco said.<\/p>\n
Barraza \u2060had previously served as mine head. Sougarret was brought on to lead the mine in August, following the accident. He had previously been operations manager \u2060there.<\/p>\n
The removal of some of Codelco’s top operational leaders underscores the complexity of the technical challenges dating back years at El Teniente, the world’s largest underground copper mine.<\/p>\n
Barraza will be replaced by Lindor Quiroga and \u200bSougarret \u200bwill be replaced by Gustavo Reyes. Claudio Canut will \u200balso take over as interim head \u200cof the Andina division, Codelco said.<\/p>\n
“RADICAL” REORGANIZATION<\/p>\n
Codelco’s board said in a separate statement on Friday that it had also identified weaknesses in governance at El Teniente and throughout the firm more broadly.<\/p>\n
The board approved a “radical” reorganization of operations at El Teniente, with senior executives more involved in the mine’s day-to-day affairs.<\/p>\n
Unalterable digital signatures will be implemented on technical reports, the board said. It did \u200cnot say whether the former executives had altered signatures.<\/p>\n
Codelco \u200badded that it would hand over information to Chile’s public \u200bprosecutor’s office while opening further internal \u200baudits.<\/p>\n
DIFFICULT ROAD AHEAD<\/p>\n
The collapse last year occurred in an expansion project at the \u200cflagship mine that was meant to boost \u200boutput at a time \u200bwhen the company is struggling to lift production.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday Sougarret told Reuters that output at the mine, once Codelco’s most productive, would be depressed for the next five years, \u200ba longer estimate than the miner’s \u200cprevious estimate of three years.<\/p>\n
He said that production would likely hover around 301,000 metric \u200btons of copper per year during that period.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Fabian Cambero; Writing by \u200bKylie Madry; Editing by Cassandra Garrison, Kirsten Donovan)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Fabian Cambero SANTIAGO, Feb 13 (Reuters) – Chilean state copper miner Codelco on Friday removed three senior…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":289832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[114,147640,29697,147638,85,147639,46,142006],"class_list":["post-289831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-chief-operations-officer-mauricio-barraza","tag-codelco","tag-el-teniente","tag-il","tag-internal-audit","tag-israel","tag-senior-executives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=289831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/289832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=289831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=289831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=289831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}