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A suspension of operations at Newmont Mining Corp’s Indonesian copper and gold mine due to a rockslide will not hit production this year given available stocks, a senior Indonesian mining official said on Wednesday.

Newmont said on Tuesday there had been a “geotechnical failure” on Sept. 18 and 19 in the west wall of the open-pit mine on Sumbawa island, which produces most of Newmont’s copper, along with a small amount of gold.

“Newmont has reported to me about the mine suspension following the rock slide. We will send a team today to inspect the mining site,” Bambang Setiawan, director general of mining, coal and geothermal at the energy and mines ministry, told Reuters.

“There will be no problem for production this year because Newmont has a lot of stock to be processed,” he added.

Newmont’s Indonesian affiliate, PT Newmont Nusa Tenggara, continued to process lower-grade ore from stockpiles at the Batu Hijau mine, the Denver-based company said in a statement expanding on an earlier filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Batu Hijau uses an advanced monitoring system that measures movement in the pit walls, so no workers were in the pit at the time of the wall movement, Newmont said.

Initial assessments indicated nominal damage to infrastructure and equipment at the pit, which is located on the remote island of Sumbawa, about 1,530 km east of Jakarta.

For 2009, the company expects equity gold sales from the Indonesian mine of between 225,000 and 250,000 ounces, along with between 210 million and 230 million pounds of copper.

Reuters