Four Is a Conviction Call. It Isn't the Population.

In a recent interview on mining.com, Frank Giustra said that four world-class undeveloped copper deposits are left in non-major hands: Los Azules, Warintza, Altar and Mocoa.

Upon reading the article, and based on my post just yesterday about the lack of projects, I wanted to dig deeper.

Giustra's list is good. But we don't think it's the whole list.

So we ran his own screen against our data — criteria: copper-primary, undeveloped, held by a developer rather than a major — and ranked what came back by global contained copper.

At least a dozen deposits qualify.

Giustra's four are genuinely among the leaders: McEwen Mining's Los Azules (16.2Mt contained copper), Aldebaran Resources' Altar (14.4Mt) and Solaris Resources' Warintza (12.5Mt) rank second, third, and fifth. Copper Giant's Mocoa is smaller on pure copper — 3.5Mt, or 5.8Mt copper-equivalent.

But sitting right alongside them are:

• Cascabel (SolGold, 14.4Mt)
• Vizcachitas (Los Andes Copper, 12.1Mt)
• Valeriano (ATEX Resources, 10.3Mt)

And above all of them, Pebble (Northern Dynasty Minerals, 34.3Mt) — the largest undeveloped copper resource in non-major hands anywhere, held back not by geology but by a US permitting veto.

None of this makes Giustra wrong on the thing that matters. His deeper point holds: scale is not the constraint. Grade, jurisdiction, permitting and stage are what separate a resource from a mine, and on those his four screen well. Pebble is the proof — 34 million tonnes of copper going nowhere.

"Four deposits left" is a conviction call, and a defensible one. It just isn't the population. The population is knowable, and it's bigger than four.

Every figure here is a global mineral resource traced to the company's latest filing, standardised to one basis, and checked for the traps that quietly corrupt a screen like this — copper versus copper-equivalent, endowment versus mine plan, this year's estimate versus a number three years stale.

That check is the difference between an opinion and a comp.

Less searching. More strategising.™