Posts

Nordgold begins mining at Lefa’s satellite deposit

Sunday, August 8, 2021

The Diguili deposit, located about 35 kilometres (22 miles) from Lefa’ processing facility, is considered a core pillar of Nordgold’s strategy to expand its resource and reserve base through organic growth and selective acquisition of high value projects.

“Our acquisition of Lefa in 2010, combined with the extensive exploration program we have undertaken since then, is precisely in line with that strategy,” COO Louw Smith said in the statement.

Diguili’s proved and probable reserves increased from 78,000 ounces at the end of 2020 to 138,000 ounces in 2021 thanks to an intense exploration program.

The gold miner, majority-owned by billionaire Alexei Mordashov and his sons Kirill and Nikita, has become a key contributor to Guinea’s economic and social development.

Five-year plan
Lefa is owned by Société Minière de Dinguiraye, in which Nordgold holds a controlling interest of 85%, with the remaining 15% held by the government of Guinea.

With four mines in Russia, one in Kazakhstan, three in Burkina Faso, one each in Guinea and Kazakhstan and several prospective projects in feasibility study, Nordgold expects to boost production by 20% over the next five years.

In contrast, production at the world’s largest gold miner, Newmont (NYSE: NEM) (TSX: NGT), is set to remain about the same until 2025.

Nordgold is also seeking to return to the London Stock Exchange, one of the world’s oldest markets, which it left in 2017.

Source: Mining.com

/by

Pancon selected to explore Superfund-designated Brewer gold mine

Monday, January 20, 2020

According to Mining News Pro – Brewer is located 12 kilometres northeast and along trend from OceanaGold’s Haile gold mine, on the underexplored Carolina Slate Belt.

According to Pancontinental, gold was discovered at the site in the early 1800s. Between 1987-1995, Brewer produced 178,000 ounces of oxide gold from open pits that extended to 50-metre depths, where copper and gold-rich sulfides were exposed but could not be processed by the oxide heap leach processing facility.

Based on documents archived at the U.S. Geological Survey, it is possible that Brewer contains a large porphyry copper-gold system at depth, as indicated by widely known prospective geology, including diatreme breccias, as well as by associated high sulphidation alteration, gold and copper mineralization, and geophysics.

In a press release, the Toronto-based company said that the team selected to work in North Carolina includes the geologists that discovered Brewer’s near-surface oxide gold mineralization 40 years ago. These experts also discovered the high-grade, near-surface Buzzard gold project, on trend less than a kilometre southwest of Brewer, and they also intersected near-surface gold mineralization at Jefferson in 2016.

Brewer was explored up to 1997. Two years later, England’s Brewer Gold Company abandoned the site and left the responsibility of land reclamation activities in the hands of the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Later on, in 2005, Brewer was designated a Superfund site.

This is where Environmental Risk Transfer comes in. Given the status of the mine and the fact that its previous owners did not address conditions posing environmental risks, the St. Louis-based firm will work on mitigating the impacts of mining activities in surrounding areas based on the expertise it has gained at the Missouri Cobalt mine. There, Environmental Risk transformed a formerly contaminated site into a hub of economic activity.

“Pancon and ERT worked together since March 2019 to win the competitive selection process led by the Brewer Gold Receiver,” Layton Croft, the miner’s president and CEO, said in the media brief. “We are ready to quickly investigate this underexplored project, with the goal of discovering new oxide gold mineralization and the underlying copper-gold porphyry system by 2021.”

 

Source: Mining.com

 

/by

Osisko Gold grabs Barkerville, creates North Spirit Discovery

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

The Montreal-based miner said each Barkerville shareholder would receive 0.0357 common share of Osisko for each share of Barkerville held, implying a value of C$0.58/share, based on Osisko’s Sept. 20 closing price on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The deal gives it access to Barkerville’s touted Cariboo gold project in British Columbia, which Osisko sees as a “potentially world-class asset” with significant infrastructure in place.

The company said the asset has similar attributes to Canadian Malartic mine, when it identified the opportunity.

“Osisko and Barkerville will take advantage of their combined mine building, exploration, permitting, development and construction expertise to advance the Cariboo gold project,” the company’s chief executive chair of the board, Sean Roosen, said in the statement.

According to a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the Cariboo project, published last month, the proposed underground mine would produce a high-quality concentrate averaging 20.5 grams of gold per tonne.

Located near a site where the old historic Cariboo Gold Quartz Mine operated from the 1930s to the 1960s, the operation will have a 11-year productive life, providing 320 full-time positions and 120 construction jobs.
Branching out

The company noted it would fund planned work through available liquidity, future revenue from royalties and streams, project debt as well as outside private equity and joint venture (JV) capital through the creation of a new company — the North Spirit Discovery Group.

The new firm is expected to become a leading resource development and finance company, which may seek joint venture partners and/or private equity capital.

Following the highly publicized multi-billion mergers of Barrick – Randgold and Newmont – Goldcorp, rising gold prices have spurred an anticipated wave of consolidation in the sector, which has favoured Canada and Australia.Earlier this month, Osisko announced it was buying fellow Canadian Stornoway Diamond, which has filed for bankruptcy protection.

The company, formed in 2014, is a royalty firm, which means that it seeks agreements giving it the right to a share of income from mines operated by other companies.

Its primary focus is the North American precious metal offtake market, with more than 135 royalties and a portfolio of resource companies such as a 16.6% interest in Osisko Mining Inc. and a 19.9% interest in Falco Resources Ltd.

Source: www.mining.com
/by

Desert completes buyout of Ashanti Gold

Saturday, August 24, 2019 – 10:59:17 AM

In a media statement, Desert said that each shareholder of Ashanti will receive 0.2857 Desert Gold shares for each Ashanti share held. In parallel, 21,097,657 Desert Gold shares were issued to Ashanti shareholders.

The buyout increases Desert’s land position along and near the Senegal-Mali Shear Zone and Main Transcurrent Fault Zone by 28% to 296.9 square kilometres. This is due to the addition of the Kossanto East project, located in western Mali, near the border with Senegal.

“Both of these regional structures are related to multi-million-ounce gold mines and deposits owned by B2Gold, Barrick, AngloGold Ashanti/IAMGOLD and Teranga,” the British Columbia-based miner said in the press release.

According to Dessert, the Ashanti concession hosts five gold zones with drill intercepts to 2.04 g/t Au over 75 metres. Gold mineralization in these zones is related to hydrothermal-type breccia zones and typical, structurally-controlled shear and fault zones hosted by both volcanics, sediments and felsic intrusions.

 Source: www.mining.com
/by