Today’s latest issue of International Mining Project News reports on 18 prefeasibility and 11 feasibility studies, 24 projects in development, one new mine that has gone into production, 14 existing mines that are expanding, 11 merger and acquisition announcements and many new appointments to new positions. It covers 26 gold projects, 15 copper, eleven silver projects, seven zinc, five each on coal, iron ore and uranium, four rare earth elements and nickel projects, two on lead, potash, phosphate, cobalt, mineral sands, lithium and PGMs, and one project each on oil sands, bauxite, monazite, niobium, aluminium, antinomy, diamonds and base metals. This fortnightly project watch is a great way of keeping up to date with your peers – other mining companies, other consultants or other engineering companies. [email protected] for a trial copy.
Located near Rankin Inlet, Nunavut, Canada, the Meliadine project was acquired in July 2010, and is one of Agnico-Eagle’s largest gold projects in terms of resources. Permitting activities are on-going with first production anticipated in 2018 and capital expenditures expected to be distributed over the 2013 to 2018 period.
Capstone Mining has entered into a definitive agreement with BHP Copper, a subsidiary of BHP Billiton, to purchase BHP Billiton’s wholly-owned Pinto Valley copper mining operation and the associated San Manuel Arizona Railroad Co in Arizona for $650 million. The Pinto Valley mine is located in the Globe-Miami mining district, some 125 km east of Phoenix. It is projected to produce 130-150 Mlb of copper in concentrate and about 10 Mlb of copper cathode annually, along with byproduct molybdenum and silver, at an estimated cash cost of approximately $1.80/lb, net of byproduct credits, for the first five years of production.
K+S has increased its capital expenditures for the new potash plant in Canada. Basic engineering of the Legacy project is further advanced and the Supervisory Board agrees to the decision of the Board of Executive Directors for raising the capex budget to C$4.1 billion. Production capacity of 2 Mt/y will be available as planned by 2017, with commissioning expected in summer 2016. The project is still economically attractive and strategically important and financing is secured.
The Windarra project, located 260 km northeast of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia, is on track to be Australia’s newest nickel producer and is scheduled to be ready to meet projected supply shortfalls in 2014/2015. The DFS incorporates the development of the existing brownfields Mt Windarra underground mine, the nearby greenfields Cerberus underground mine, a nickel sulphide concentrator plant and a retreatment plant. It also details the development of gold production facility on the site.
Goldrock Mines has posted its newest powerpoint which contains information on the recently announced Lindero feasibility study. This 100% owned, permitted project in Argentina aims to produce 128,000 oz/y in the first three years and 109,000 oz/y for the first nine years.
Lake Victoria Mining Co has encouraging gold recovery test results from its Kinyambwiga project in northern Tanzania. Two gold bearing samples each weighing about 40 kg were tested by two independent metallurgical laboratories. The first set of test results were completed by Peacocke & Simpson Mineral Processing Engineers in Harare, Zimbabwe. The second tests were completed in Vancouver, British Columbia by Met-Solve Laboratories. Testing found that Kinyambwiga’s gold can be recovered by conventional and routine metallurgical methods, which will be used to design the project’s most economical and optimal recovery process.
Fission Energy Corp’s previously announced plan of arrangement with Denison Mines Corp has been approved by the Supreme Court of British Columbia. So, Denison will acquire all of the outstanding common shares of Fission with Fission spinning out certain assets into a newly-incorporated exploration company, Fission Uranium Corp.
South African focused PGM exploration and development company NKWE Platinum has reached a key milestone in the development of its world class PGM assets, with the formation of a strategic partnership with Zijin Mining Group, in respect of the development of Nkwe’s South African PGM assets, and in particular the flagship Garatau mining project.
ICT Group and Russian state-owned Rostech plan to invest at least $1 billion in a joint venture to extract and refine rare earth metals at the Tomtor deposit in Yakutia. The new JV will also handle monazite storage in Krasnoufimsk in the Ural region and a hydrometallurgical plant that would process 4,500 t/y of ferro-niobium and 10,000 t/y of REOs.
The Ausenco team working on the Grande Côte mineral sands rail and port infrastructure project reached one million man-hours without a loss-time incident (LTI).
Stanmore Coal has released the feasibility study results for the Range thermal coal project.
Deep Yellow – whose major 19.5% shareholder is Paladin Energy, is progressing the 45 Mlb U3O8 Omahola project – one of the last independently held, high-grade deposits in Namibia – with a current focus on uplifting the resource to a “critical mass” 50 Mlb U3O8 to underpin a prefeasibility study. The objective is to get Omahola in production in 2016 producing at a throughput rate of at least 2.2 Mlb/y or slightly higher assuming a conventional heap leaching process.
Northern Dynasty Minerals has responded to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) release of a revised draft of the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment (BBWA) report originally released last spring, reaffirming that the new report fails to correct the central flaw that critics roundly agree invalidates the original and revised study. Ron Thiessen, President & CEO of Northern Dynasty, a 50% owner of the Pebble Limited Partnership with Anglo American: “You simply cannot assess the effects of a mining project that has not been proposed, and for which key engineering solutions, environmental safeguards and site-specific mitigation factors have not been provided. The EPA has clearly made some effort to address the myriad errors of fact, methodology and design that professional Peer Reviewers and other commentators catalogued with respect to the original BBWA draft last year, and we will take some time to assess those efforts.”