Kennecott Exploration Company

Exploring for a range of commodities

Owned by Rio Tinto, the Kennecott Exploration Company is responsible for discovering and acquiring mineral and energy resources throughout North and Central America.

The company focuses on exploration for a wide range of commodities including copper, gold, zinc, nickel, diamonds and energy minerals.

This business unit employs a team of geoscientists many of whom have many years experience in mineral exploration and evaluation, mine development and mining operations.  It has been especially successful in recent years in finding viable diamond deposits in north America.

The company works closely with other Rio Tinto Group Companies such as Kennecott Utah Copper Corporation, Kennecott Minerals Company, Diavik Diamond Mines, Rio Tinto Energy America, Rio Tinto Minerals, and QIT to help them carry out their own exploration projects.

Kennecott Exploration has regional offices in Vancouver, a head office in Salt Lake City, and a laboratory in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Operations in the southern United States and Central America are run from offices in Tucson, Arizona.  While these are the principal bases for exploration teams, from time to time local project bases will be opened to provide more efficient operations and closer contact with local communities. 

Kennecott has built up or acquired a large exploration database for North America but concentrates its efforts on providing Rio Tinto with the types of orebodies it is best equipped to develop. The company often enters joint venture partnerships and works with other exploration companies, contractors and government agencies to acquire critical basic exploration data in areas of high mineral potential.