OGP1 Chile

Escondida is the world's largest copper mine and produces about 5 percent of global supply.The Escondida Copper mine project was initially created to place the Los Colorados concentrator with a new facility - Organic Growth Project 1 or OGP1 - adjacent to the Laguna Seca concentrator.The original scope included decommissioning and demolishing Los Colorados, and building the new plant to access higher-grade ore beneath the existing facilities. However, the mine’s owners subsequently decided to refurbish and restart Los Colorados. Thanks to revised mine planning, the higher-grade ore can be accessed without demolishing the concentrator.

With capacity of 152,000 metric tons per day, OGP1 is the largest single-line unit ever built. While executing a project at an elevation of 10,000 feet (3,050 meters) in one of the world’s driest deserts presents many challenges, it did not prevent Bechtel from successfully completing OGP1. Considerable work have performed in the past, including a billion-dollar 110-percent expansion between 1998 and 2002. If any industrial installation needs water, it is Escondida. Not only do mining operations use lots of it, but the Atacama Desert, a portion of which is home to the Escondida complex, is one of the driest places on Earth.

Average annual rainfall in the desert totals some six-tenths of an inch, or about 15 millimeters. In some parts of the Atacama—which extends in a relatively narrow band from southernmost Peru into northern Chile—humans have never recorded any precipitation. Yet more than 1 million people call it home. The mining complex is more than 100 miles (about 170 kilometers) from the city of Antofagasta. For good reason "escondida" means hidden. Power system of the facility includes a range of Electrical Substations with voltage levels of 220/69/33kV. Relay protection and Control IEDs are presented with ABB and GE IEDs (REx670, REF650, GE D60, T60, F60, F350).