Engineering & Mining Journal

MAR 2013

Engineering and Mining Journal - Whether the market is copper, gold, nickel, iron ore, lead/zinc, PGM, diamonds or other commodities, E&MJ takes the lead in projecting trends, following development and reporting on the most efficient operating pr

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REGIONAL NEWS - EXPLORATION ROUNDUP British Columbia Cutting Regulatory Red Tape Rich Coleman, British Columbia Minister of Energy, Mines, and Natural Gas, announced in late January 2013 a package of regulatory changes designed to cut red tape and make exploration and mining more efficient in the province. The package includes: • A new policy allowing companies to apply for Multi-Year Area-Based permits, so a company can avoid having to apply for multiple permits when working in the same exploration area. • Beginning in February 2014, the British Columbia provincial government will shift to a new electronic application system for natural resource-related projects. The first electronic application to be added will be a Notice of Work application. • The province will soon finalize a review of existing mineral and coal-land reserves. More than 50,000 ha of land have already been made available for exploration as a result of this review. • The province will work with the federal government to eliminate regulatory duplication and develop a single, effective environmental assessment process. Gavin C. Dirom, president and CEO, Association for Mineral Exploration British Columbia, said, "We welcome the shift to a transparent online notice-of-work process, as well as changes to the Mines Act that will reduce red tape." Preliminary estimates indicate that mineral exploration expenditures in British Columbia in 2012 totaled C$680 million, an increase of 47% over the previous record of C$462 million in 2011. Over the past 10 years, the trend in exploration spending in British Columbia has been one of steady increases each year, except in 2008–2009. Exploration Briefs Yamana Gold has reported an initial estimated indicated mineral resource of 1.95 million gold equivalent oz for its Cerro Moro gold project in Santa Cruz province, Argentina. The estimate represents a 44% increase from the previous estimate made before Yamana acquired the property in mid-2012. Yamana expects to spend $12 million on 25,000 m of exploration drilling at Cerro Moro during 2013. The program will focus on drill testing eight priority target 24 E&MJ; • MARCH 2013 areas located on the project's northern La Negrita block and on existing geologic targets, geochemical anomalies, and vein extensions within nine priority target areas in the southern Escondida block, which contains the majority of Cerro Moro's current known mineral resources. Yamana also is driving a productionready decline into the largest of the Cerro Moro orebodies to provide a platform for further exploration work and to enable access to the orebody to explore its physical properties and grade continuity. The company is evaluating developing the project as a combined open pit-underground operation with 1,000-mt/d of mill throughput—70% from underground and 30% from open pit. (www.yamana.com) Great Western Minerals is undertaking an additional 9,400-m, 65-hole diamond drilling program at its Steenkampskrall rare earths project, located 350 km north of Cape Town in South Africa's Western Cape province. The program is targeting areas within and adjacent to the Steenkampskrall project's currently established resource. The program includes step-out drilling to investigate extension of the project's Main Monazite Zone along strike east and west and down-dip of the known mineral resource, infill drilling on areas of lower data density in order to upgrade inferred mineral resources to indicated, detailed infill drilling for mine planning purposes, and selected orientated core drilling for geotechnical analyses in support of planned underground developments. Great Western has also initiated exploration activities on the project's surrounding 550.5-km2 Prospecting Right. This work includes reconnaissance and prospecting surveys over three known occurrences of mineralization, selection and preparation of 10 channel sample lines crossing monazite veins in historic trenches, a scintillometer ground survey at 10-m station intervals in the vicinity of the exposed monazite occurrences, and geologic mapping of the monazite and host rocks. (www.gwmg.ca) NovaCopper has released an initial NI 43101-compliant mineral resource estimate for the South Reef zone of its Bornite project in the Ambler mining district in northwestern Alaska. At the base case 1% copper cut-off grade, the South Reef zone is estimated to contain an inferred resource of 43.1 million mt at 2.54% copper, or 2.4 billion lb of contained copper. The South Reef estimate is the second resource estimate for the Bornite project. In July 2012, NovaCopper released an initial resource estimate for the project's Ruby Creek zone of 6.8 million mt at 1.19% copper indicated and 47.7 million mt at 0.84% copper inferred at a 0.5% copper cut-off grade. The South Reef zone is located approximately 500 m southeast of the Ruby Creek zone. The overall South Reef mineralized zone roughly defines an area measuring 800 m by 250 m based on current drilling results. The resource remains open to expansion to the north, northwest, northeast, and southwest. NovaCopper plans to resume drilling during the second quarter of 2013, with a goal of expanding the resources at the Bornite project and to further delineate zones of higher-grade copper mineralization (>2%). (www.novacopper.com) Corex Gold has finalized an agreement with Vale whereby Vale can acquire up to a 65% interest in Corex's Santana gold project in Sonora, Mexico by making work expenditures of $16 million over a period of six years. Exploration work on the 8,500-ha Santana property is targeting a multi-million-oz copper-gold porphyry deposit. Vale has a first option to acquire up to a 51% interest in the Santana project by making aggregate minimal exploration expenditures of $8 million over an initial three-year term. Vale is required to make an initial cash payment of $100,000 to be credited toward the year-one expenditures and at its option may make a further cash payment of $100,000 to be credited towards expenditures in year two. Vale has a second option to earn an additional 9% by spending an additional $4 million during year four and the first six months of year five and a third option to earn a further 5% by spending another $4 million during the second half of year five and all of year six. (www.corexgold.com) www.e-mj.com

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