Russian billionaire, Oleg Deripaska's, mining unit Basic Element rescinded their bid from an auction for the Siberian located copper deposit Udokan.  Strikeforce Mining and Resources Ltd. (SMR)  ^[1] did not see the economic sense of bidding independently.

Russia's Natural Resources Ministry is scheduled to award the Udokan field, which contains over 13 million tonnes of copper, in a Sept. 17 auction. It has set the starting price at 4.5 billion roubles ($178.1 million) and said about $1.6 billion would be required to bring the deposit into production.

Read the entire article here ^[2].

SMR said in June it planned to bid through the Sorsk Mining and Processing Complex, one of its two ferro-molybdenum plants that together account for 4 percent of world demand for the steel-hardening alloy. In Tuesday's statement, the company said it had notified the Rosnedra subsoil agency, a unit of the Natural Resources Ministry, of its withdrawal from the upcoming tender.

Find the full article here ^[2].

Metalloinvest ^[3] plans to team with Russian Technologies ^[4] who may invite Norilsk Nickel ^[5] to join for the bid and Russkaya Med consortium - Russian Railways ^[6] and Urals Mining and Metals Co. ^[7] - also plan to bid on Udokan.  Udokan is one of the world's biggest untapped copper fields.