Glencore may get rights to mine the coveted Cape York bauxite reserves

Glencore may be the ultimate candidate to finally tap the vast bauxite reserves that has been remained unexplored for decades, which has been the point of interest for many mining companies around the world. Glencore is supposed to hold talks soon with the government of the Australian state of Queensland.

On Thursday, they announced that they have been singled out by the government as the "preferred proponent" to carry out the Aurukun Bauxite Project in Northern Australia. Talks are on to finalise the land use pact with the indigenous landowners as well as the state development agreement.

The bauxite is hidden under the indigenous land of the Wik and Wik Way people in the Cape York region which is generally an impoverished area suffering from vast unemployment.

Although there are talks about the low quality of the 439-million tonne of reserve, but that has never deterred the big names in the aluminium sector.

The government had stripped Canada’s Alcan of lease rights on the reserves in 2004 after 29-year old wait for a mine to develop. In 2007 Aluminium Corp of China showed an interest ready to invest $2.5 billion for an alumina and aluminium making project but scrapped the plan due to global financial crisis. Even BHP Billiton, Alcoa and Mitsubishi Corp had shown interest in the reserves over the years.