Data / Mines / Copper ore

Copper ore mines in the US: 31 open mines and MSHA citations

MSHA lists 31 open copper ore mines in the US, run by 26 operators and employing 15,498 people. Since January 1, 2022 its inspectors issued 5,061 citations and orders there with $4,640,484 in proposed penalties, and operators reported 1,924 injury or illness cases, 3 of them fatal. The operators with the most open mines are Asarco LLC, a Delaware Limited Liability Company; Kennecott Utah Copper LLC; Freeport-McMoRan Morenci Inc.. Data from MSHA, November 6, 2026.

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Open mines

31

Operators

26

Employees

15,498

Active

25

NonProducing

5

Temporarily Idled

1

Mines run by individuals, counted and not listed

1

Citations and orders since January 1, 2022

5,061

Significant and substantial

716 (14.1%)

Closure orders

94

High negligence or reckless

380

Proposed penalties

$4,640,484

Amount paid so far

$3,661,247

Inspections

1,040

Inspector hours on site

30,368

Citations per inspection

4.87 (all mines 2.30)

Accident reports

1,965

Injury and illness cases

1,924

Fatalities

3

Latest MSHA record

November 5, 2026

Operators with the most open mines

Ranked by open mines, then by citations. Sole proprietors and individuals are not listed.

Operators with the most citations

Citations and orders issued since January 1, 2022 at their open mines here.

Mines with the most citations

Open mines, ranked by citations and orders since January 1, 2022.

States

Citations and injury cases by year

Calendar years since 2022; 2026 runs to the date of the MSHA files.

Standards cited most at copper ore mines

Sections of Title 30 of the Code of Federal Regulations named on the citations, with the part each belongs to.

Injury and illness cases at copper ore mines

Accident reports by degree of injury, as the operator reported them to MSHA.

What the accident reports at copper ore mines describe

Accident classification, as MSHA codes the circumstances that contributed most directly.

Equipment named in accident reports at copper ore mines

Updated November 6, 2026. Read from US Department of Labor, Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), Open Government Data Sets. US government work, public domain. Counts come from the MSHA files published on November 6, 2026. An open mine is one MSHA lists as Active, Intermittent, New Mine, Temporarily Idled or NonProducing; 13,673 were open that day. Citations, penalties, inspections and accident reports run from January 1, 2022. A citation is an inspector's allegation and an operator can contest it; the penalty is the amount MSHA first proposed, before any contest or settlement. An operator is the legal entity MSHA assesses, and a parent company is its controller. Mines run by sole proprietors or by individuals are counted in every total and are not named. This page uses MSHA data and is not endorsed or certified by MSHA. Free to reuse with credit to SpecStream under CC BY 4.0. Spot a wrong value? Write to [email protected] with the link to this page.