Barrick Says Reko Diq Needs 'Security Improvement' Before Full Construction Begins

Barrick Mining Corporation's chief executive told investors on September 29 that Reko Diq, Pakistan's flagship copper-gold project in Balochistan, remains "a long-term strategic option" rather than a project under active construction — the clearest sign yet that a security review the company opened in February has not been resolved, and won't be for some time.

What Barrick actually said

Speaking at the Mining Forum Americas in Colorado Springs, CEO Mark Hill told the room: "We are revisiting it because we need some sort of security improvement before we would embark on a full construction schedule at Reko Diq." Hill did not offer a new construction timeline or put a number on the financial impact of the slowdown. The company's own framing, repeated in filings and on the earnings call, is that engineering, procurement and construction planning is being reviewed rather than abandoned — development has slowed, not stopped.

That statement confirms what Barrick first signaled in February, when it opened a security review in response to an escalation in militant activity across Balochistan, and reinforced in April, when it said that review would extend a further twelve months, through roughly mid-2027. First production at Reko Diq, previously targeted for late 2028, is now realistically looking at 2029 or later.

Why Balochistan's security situation is the variable

Reko Diq sits in one of the areas of Pakistan hit hardest by militant violence this year. Pakistan's security forces have run more than 40,000 intelligence-based operations nationwide in 2026, over 31,000 of them in Balochistan alone — a scale of activity we've covered in detail in our reporting on the 96-hour operations that killed 71 militants across the province. The Baloch Liberation Army and other groups have repeatedly targeted infrastructure and personnel tied to resource extraction specifically, which is precisely the risk Barrick's review is meant to price in before it commits billions more in capital.

For Barrick, the calculation is straightforward even if it's uncomfortable to say publicly: a mining company does not pour $5.6 billion into a first-phase build in a province where the roads leading to the site can be cut off by a single coordinated raid. For Pakistan, the calculation is more painful, because Reko Diq was supposed to be one of the clearest answers to a different problem we've tracked all year — the decline in foreign direct investment flagged by OICCI and the IMF. A flagship project stalling for security reasons is close to the worst possible advertisement for a country trying to attract the kind of long-horizon capital that mining requires.

How Islamabad is responding

Pakistan's position, delivered through Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik, has been to keep publicly characterizing Reko Diq as "a flagship national project" central to the country's mineral-sector ambitions, while working with Barrick on the security arrangements the company says it needs. Barrick Executive Chairman John L. Thornton has made more than one trip to Islamabad this year specifically to discuss procurement strategy and security upgrades with federal officials, and the two sides have repeatedly reaffirmed the partnership in joint statements even as the underlying construction timeline keeps slipping.

What's notable is what hasn't happened: neither side has walked away. Pakistan continues to hold its 25% federal stake alongside Balochistan's own 25%, and Barrick continues to call the deposit — one of the largest untapped copper-gold reserves in the world — a long-term asset worth protecting rather than one worth writing off. That mutual reluctance to exit is itself a signal of how much economic upside both sides believe is still on the table, security conditions permitting.

The through-line

Reko Diq is a case study in how Pakistan's two biggest economic stories of 2026 — the search for foreign investment and the unresolved security situation in Balochistan — are not separate narratives but the same one. Every month the security review extends is a month of delayed royalties, delayed export revenue, and delayed proof that Pakistan's mineral sector can attract the kind of capital it needs at the scale the IMF program assumes. Mark Hill's comments did not change the trajectory of that story. They confirmed it.

Build Better Pakistan's Economy Desk is tracking the Reko Diq security review and Pakistan's broader foreign-investment pipeline.