查看更多>>摘要：While announcing the planned 125 million dollars expansion of its St Ives gold operation in Western Australia, Gold Fields Ltd again took the opportunity to dismiss any suggestions that it paid too much for its WA assets just over two years ago. South African-based Gold Fields bought St Ives (as well as Agnew) from WMC Resources Ltd for 232 million US dollars during September 2001 following a competitive bidding process. Then, in mid-2002, the mining house expanded and refocused the operation's On-site exploration efforts to very near-mine drilling and initiated a pre-feasibility study to examine the range of options available for the processing circuit The document was concluded in February this year and --according to the company's head of international operations John Munro -- the results were so compelling that the mining house moved immediately into the feasibility stage with the aim of constructing another plant.
查看更多>>摘要：Durable West Australian mining house Straits Resources Ltd hopes to be a 200,000 Ounce per annum gold producer within three years. Furthermore, it is looking to produce the ounces for a cash cost of under 200/oz US dollars and generate an annual 40 million dollars. Straits' has a number of cards up its corporate sleeve, but for now its initial gold cash cow will be in the form of its 70 percent-owned Mt Muro project on the Indonesian island of Kalimantan, which was operated by the now deceased Aurora Gold Ltd between 1995-2002 and has a Current resource of 1,715,919 tonnes at 3.8 grams/tonne gold equivalent.
查看更多>>摘要：It seems Australia's gold sector has actually been destroying value through exploration. According to manager of WMC Resources Ltd's risk capital analysis team, Richard Schodde, research Covering 1985-2002 has indicated the industry found 186 million ounces in 150 deposits at an average cost of 30/oz dollars. Using a historical gold price, he said, it was a break-even situation in terms of the value created. But with today's lower prices and higher taxes it is a different story. In short, the sector should really be aiming for a discovery cost of 15/oz dollars. "We have to do a much better job on exploration," Schodde explained. "We have to focus in on where the value is created and, as I suggested before, bigger is better but you Can't take that strategy too far.
查看更多>>摘要：Gold stocks haven't exactly been the star performers on a scorecard drawn up by a Sydney-based mining analyst Covering the recent plethora of initial public offerings in Australia's resources sector. In fact the bottom three of 34 new Companies included in the exercise had gold exploration at Or near the top of their agendas upon listing, while the highest rating float was planning to be a copper miner. These were some of the conclusions reached by Far East Capital Ltd's Warwick Grigor in a Ozequities commentary regarding the recent surge in the country's IPO market. The scorecard, Grigor said at the recent Mining 2003 Conference in Brisbane, was not designed to guarantee that investors would make money, but rather provide some kind of bottom line in what he called "a very volatile and emotional world".
查看更多>>摘要：In 1997 the Reserve Bank of Australia, showing all the short-sightedness that we have come to expect from the banking, Investment and economics professions in recent years, sold most of its gold reserves. It has subsequently sought to justify that decision on the grounds of gold's poor performance in recent years, the need to diversify its investments, and the money it made on the sale. No doubt the bank, like most other central authorities piled into US dollars in the belief, once again based on all too typical myopia, that this currency was somehow different to all that had gone before it, and that its strength would last forever With the US dollar now in decline and gold back over 400 US dollars, the Reserve Bank ought to be kicking itself for its 1997 call.
查看更多>>摘要：Gold explorers in New South Wales have received something of a caning from the chairman of one of Australia's largest mining industry consultants. Speaking at a recent seminar on risk analysis in exploration held in Western Australia, SRK Consulting's Mike Etheridge said a pilot study he was involved in Covering a part of NSW had indicated repeated reconnaissance exploration -- especially geochemistry work -- had largely proven to be a waste of money. The Ongoing study is looking at around 1,100 open file exploration reports for about 350 ELs over a 20-year period and are restricted to Ordovician gold-copper porphyry and epithermal targets in central NSW.
查看更多>>摘要：While completing his obligatory term of national service in South Africa during the early 1980s, RSG Globai's Mike Sperinck got the opportunity to do something that many people only dream about - giving orders to a superior. The Rhodes University geology and chemistry graduate was completing officers' training, and had been posted with South Africa's Geological Survey to concentrate on engineering geology, when it was discovered that the parade ground of the Country's largest army base -voortrekkerhoogter - was sitting on a significant gravity low. Sperinck, who had reached the rank of lieutenant, was given the task of drilling 10 bore holes in the middle of what was the regiment sergeant major's "holy grail".
查看更多>>摘要：With Challenger underground proceeding on schedule Dominion Mining Ltd continues to assess it regional plays and in the process has found itself under scrutiny from some majors. The company's South West Yilgarn project in Western Australia has stirred some interest at the big end of town, according to Dominion managing director Peter Alexander, but he added it was an area that had never been well understood. The main area to emerge at this project is the Nanicup Bridge area, a large, low-grade system hosting that appears to have the potential to host a major gold deposit.
查看更多>>摘要：With the objective of uncovering sufficient reserves by August next year to restart operations at the Fortnum mine in Western Australia, Gleneagle Gold Ltd is looking to spend about 1.5 million dollars on exploration next year. With just under 3 million dollars in the bank, the company has already spent 800,000 dollars since listing in July. Its plan is to aggressively explore its suite of advanced targets within the Peak Hill Goldfield with the aim of building on the current resource base of 326,900 ounces and establish a reserve base that will support re-commissioning of the 1 million tonne per annum Fortnum treatment plant.
查看更多>>摘要：With earlier drilling results from its copper-gold play in Eritrea drawing market attention Sub-Sahara Resources NL is now on the look-out for partners on its projects in Tanzania. The Perth-based junior has been operating in Eritrea for three years and its most advanced project is Asmara which takes in the Debarwa copper-gold resource, the Adi Nefas Deep gold resource and the Adi Nefas zinc resource. Debarwa hosts 1.65 million tonnes grading 5.1 percent copper and 1.4 grams/tonne gold based on drilling undertaken previously by Phelps Dodge Inc.
NSTL