The David Lowell story 
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Reproduced from a March 1996 column in Australia's Mining Monthly by Julian Malnic.

Arizona's David Lowell had a stellar career finding porphyry copper deposits for major companies - including BHP and RTZ's La Escondida orebody.  But now he's shooting for himself and getting what Canada's Globe and Mail calls "sizzling results" with his emerging star, Arequipa Resources Ltd. 

Lowell started his mining career at the tender age of seven, napping ore and throwing it into the back of his father's pick-up.  In 1970 he wrote a paper on the anatomy of porphyry copper deposits with John Gilbert in a study of Arizona's Kalamazoo copper deposit.  This study became the universal template for explorers around the globe in their search for porphyry copper deposits. In his typically laconic Arizonan style he none-the-less ranks himself as a "half-assed academic".

In industry, no-one made greater use of the model than Lowell himself.  Kalamazoo was also Lowell's first major discovery.  He went on to make major contributions to major porphyry finds at Vekol Hills Arizona, Casa Grande West Arizona, the JA deposit in British Columbia, the Dizon orebody in the Philippines and finally "the hidden one" - La Escondida, and the nearby Zaldivar deposit in the high plains of Chile's Atacama Dessert. 

Just a few hilltops away, he also had a major hand in Niugini Mining's gold finds at San Cristobal and in identifying Australian junior Equatorial Mining's Leonor SX/EW copper target.

In the prickly game of awarding credits for discovery, Lowell is cautious and says, "Altogether I've collected six finder's fees in my career - one of those I didn't deserve - really - and the one that I did deserve came out about even. The one that had a significant effect was the Escondida discovery. That allowed me to comfortably retire for the rest of my life."

With his finder's fees, Lowell even bought back from the banks his uncle's ranch where he was raised near the town of Nogales near the Mexican border, a place where he now lives and works. But more appealing than retirement were Lowell's long-building visions of the metal potential of  Peru immediately along the Cordillera from Chile's copper boom belt. His sister was born there while his father ran a mine