Underground soft-rock mining is a group of underground mining techniques used to extract coal, oil shale, potash, and other minerals or geological materials from sedimentary ("soft") rocks. Because deposits in sedimentary rocks are commonly layered and relatively less hard, the mining methods used differ from those used to mine deposits in igneous or metamorphic rocks (see underground hard-rock mining). Underground mining techniques also differ greatly from those of surface mining.
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👉 Underground hard-rock mining in the context of Underground soft-rock mining
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Underground hard-rock mining in the context of Copper mining in Chile
Chile is the world's largest producer of copper and has been so uninterruptedly since 1983. This activity provides a substantial part of the Chilean state's revenue: slightly less than 6% in 2020, with state-owned copper company Codelco alone generating 2.6% of state revenue.
Mining of copper in Chile is done chiefly on large and giant low-grade porphyry copper deposits which are primarily mined by the following companies; Codelco, BHP, Antofagasta Minerals, Anglo American and Glencore. Together these companies stood for 83.6% of the copper output in Chile in 2019 and many copper mining companies are joint ventures involving one at least one of these. Medium-scale mining in Chile, which focuses mainly on copper, produced about 4.5% of the copper mined in the country from 2017 to 2021. Copper is also the main product of small-scale mining in Chile, with about 95% of small-scale miners working in copper mining. One estimate puts the number of active copper mines in Chile in 2023 at 67. In the 2005–2024 period 81–89% of the annual copper production in Chile has been mined in open pits and the remainder in underground mines.
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