Asset Management at Closure: Progressive Closure, Closure Provisions and Financial Guarantees

Both industry experience and international standards (ICMM, IGF) position progressive closure as one of the most recommended practices in terms of closure management at a mine site. This is based on several strengths among which we can mention: (i) the progressive reduction of liabilities, (ii) provides the opportunity to assess and validate the designed closure activities at a controllable scale and to identify improvement opportunities before the final closure, (iii) reduces uncertainties in the estimation of closure costs, (iv) provides certainty to stakeholders regarding the effectiveness of the mining company's policies, among others.

The implementation of this type of management often confronts the mining company with scenarios where the preliminary closure costs estimation (closure plan and/or closure provision) for a facility "X" differs from the real expenditure to be incurred at the time of its execution.

Closure legislation has already installed in the national industry a culture of Closure management throughout the mining cycle of a company. For this reason, it is necessary to develop and have instruments and tools to make visible the assets of the site, the Closure activities and the costs associated to those actions.