The company initiated a staged assessment of the mine before greenlighting a controlled restart. While two workers sustained injuries during the rockfall, 13 others were treated and discharged locally. Preliminary inspections indicate the incident was localized, sparing the mine’s broader operating systems from lasting impact.
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Rio Tinto Resumes Underground Mining at Oyu Tolgoi After Rockfall
Two employees remain hospitalized in Ulaanbaatar following a seismic event that triggered a rockfall at Mongolia’s Oyu Tolgoi copper mine. Operations were paused Thursday evening after ground vibrations hit a fault zone, but Rio Tinto confirmed the incident caused no structural damage to the site’s critical underground cave infrastructure.
Rio Tinto, which holds a 66% stake in the site alongside the Mongolian government, has been aggressively expanding underground extraction to reach deeper, higher-value deposits. This pause arrives during a period of significant growth for the project, which recently posted a 29% increase in copper output. The company maintains its long-term projection that the mine will become the world’s fourth-largest copper operation by 2030.
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