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Private company

Corriente Resources

Logo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

Corriente Resources was a multinational corporation based in Canada that completed feasibility studies and environmental impact assessments (EIA) for open-pit copper mines in the Ecuadorian rainforest, including the Mirador mine. The Mirador mine is the first industrial scale copper mine to be developed in Ecuador. Corriente Resources also completed explorations of the San Carlos Panantza mine, although development of that project was halted in 2020 by Indigenous opposition.2 It was founded in 1992.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

1992Founded1

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Photo: Seventhirty34, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons5

Corriente Resources was a multinational corporation based in Canada that completed feasibility studies and environmental impact assessments (EIA) for open-pit copper mines in the Ecuadorian rainforest, including the Mirador mine. The Mirador mine is the first industrial scale copper mine to be developed in Ecuador. Corriente Resources also completed explorations of the San Carlos Panantza mine, although development of that project was halted in 2020 by Indigenous opposition.2

The story

Corriente Resources was incorporated in 1992. About 2000, it entered into an agreement with BHP Billiton, buying mining concessions in the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

Through a community relations campaign, Corriente Resources was able to win over many of the inhabitants of the area that will be affected by the mine, spending money. However, in 2006 a local resistance movement was formed, which then took some mining camps. Another group of locals, supported by the corporation, resisted the take, and there was a fistfight.

Due to its economic power, Corriente Resources not only has influenced Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, but also local authorities in Zamora Chinchipe and Morona Santiago provinces, where the corporation operates. In early 2009, during a demonstration against the corporation in the town of San Miguel de Conchay in Morona Santiago, the village chief, Hernán Samaniego, issued a death threat against Vicente Zhunio, one of the copper mine's opponents.

From Wikipedia’s article on Corriente Resources, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Products and brands

  • copper

Listed on Wikidata.1

Timeline

  1. 1992Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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