Whether the cause of the shaking was due to an earthquake or drilling remains under investigation.
El Teniente, which is operated by the Chilean state-owned mining firm Codelco, boasts more than 4,500km of tunnels and is the largest underground copper deposit in the world.
Last year, it produced 356,000 metric tonnes of copper – nearly 7 per cent of the total for Chile.
Chile’s mining industry is considered among the safest in the world, with a fatality rate of 0.02 per cent in 2024, according to the National Geology and Mining Service of Chile.
