GMA Resources reports good progress with construction of the Tirek/Amesmessa gold project in the far south of Algeria. GMA owns 52% of ENOR, the Algerian operating company for Tirek/Amesmessa, with the remainder owned by Sonatrach, the Algerian state-owned oil and gas company.
This is just one of the projects in the November 12 edition of International Mining Project News covering significant news of pre- or feasibility studies, development decisions, projects going in to production, first production and expansions announced in the past two weeks. As the previous issue, October 29, the most projects are in Australia, 21, followed by ten in Canada, nine in USA four each in Mexico and South Africa, three each in the Philippines and China, two each in Algeria, Argentina, Namibia, Papua New Guinea and Sweden and one each in Brazil, Botswana, Russia, Madagascar, Indonesia, Turkey, Cote d’Ivoire, Malawi, Solomon Islands, Venezuela, Chile, Zambia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador, Greece, and Angola. The projects covered are in gold, 42, 26 in copper, 14 silver, nine nickel, eight zinc projects, seven molybdenum, five projects each in coal, PGMs and uranium, four cobalt projects, three each in lead and iron ore, two in diamonds, and one each in chrome, oil sands, titanium, tungsten, zircon.
The Tirek gold mine is located centrally in the northern third of the exploitation permit area some 60 km north of Amesmessa which is in the extreme south of the permit area. A gold deposit at Tirek was discovered in the early 1970s and the initial mine development commenced in October 1998 with a decision to mine a number of open cuts exploiting high grade quartz-reef lodes. Construction of a processing facility was completed in June 2001 and since that date ENOR has produced in aggregate some 20,000 oz of gold from an open-pit mining operation. A resource statement for Tirek has been produced by the Algerian government agency ORGM totalling 576,225 oz at an average grade of 17 g/t Au.
An underground gold reserve has been identified at Amesmessa, where prospecting since the 1970s has discovered 50 mineralized veins in the Amesmessa area of which 36 have been the focus of detailed exploration. From this extensive work 18 mineralized veins have been considered of economic interest. A resource statement for Amesmessa has been produced by ORGM which has been recalculated by a US based consulting group. The updated model indicated 1,066,472 oz of gold at 15.8 g/t Au.
All preparations for the delivery of the major equipment forTirek /Amesmessa are progressing well with orders currently in process. All equipment relating to the Phase 1 Leasing contract with Arab Leasing is at site. This includes 6 CAT 735 ADTs, 2 CAT 980 wheel loaders, 1 CAT D-8 bulldozer, 1 CAT 930 wheel loader, 1 CAT 365 shovel and 2 Tamrock Panterra 1500 drills. Equipment for Phase 2 of the Arab Leasing Finance is awaiting documentation in the Port of Marseilles, France.
Pre-shipment inspections of the Summit Valley equipment (supplier of the carbon absorption, carbon regeneration and acid wash systems, as well as the EW circuit and equipment for carbon handling and gold refining) will be completed within the next week. A pre-shipment inspection of the Roc Impact equipment (crushing and agglomeration equipment) is also complete. The pre-shipment inspection of the equipment for the modular assay laborary, supplied by Unit Electrical Engineering, will take place during the second week of November.
Preparations for the construction of the pipeline to supply process water to the Tirek mines are progressing. The pipe will be supplied by AB Alvenius of Sweden and shipments from Alvenius’ factory are now scheduled to begin in mid November, with the final shipments expected to be made in mid January 2007. The modular water pumping station will be shipped from USA during November.
With the expansion of gold production at the existing Tirek mine, GMA is pushing ahead with the objective to more than double existing processing capacity. A new 2.7 m x 5.5 m, 525 kW ball mill for Tirek’s processing plant has been purchased from New Concepts Projects of South Africa. The ball mill is currently in Johannesburg, and work has started to bring the ball mill to a fully refurbished state. Delivery of this to site is now expected in March 2007.
Douglas Perkins, CEO of GMA: “The recently announced positive column test results combined with our aggressive construction schedule mean that GMA has a very exciting year ahead with first production commencing at Amesmessa in the first quarter of 2007.” www.gmaresources.co.uk