It's not really a matter of what KRY or GRZ wants as far as the copper is concerned, but rather what Venezuela wants.

I understand the economic argument that KRY put forward to discard the copper and concentrate on gold, but that decision was made well before copper broke $3 a pound. Venezuela seems to take the view that discarding the copper in some way reduces the return to them in royalties and may create an issue with the tailings. Whether that is true or not, if they believe it then it becomes an issue that must be dealt with.

In fact a combined mine would not use up all the higher grade Las Cristinas ore before starting on Brisas. The mix of ore is different in that Las Cristinas has more saprolite ore (with zero copper and higher gold grades) than Brisas which is more hard rock with better copper grades.

In an ideal situation, the Brisas mill is designed to handle 75,000 tpd. KRY proposed 20,000 tpd. If a combined operation used 20k tpd from LC and blended in 55 tpd from Brisas that would extract all the copper in both and the blended ore would be much easier to handle. At that rate the total mine life would still be close to 30 years, total gold production around 650k oz a year and 64k pounds of copper with just one mill.

It makes economic sense; now just how can the deal be done to suit everyone involved?