The latest issue of International Mining Project News, out today, has reports on 18 Prefeasibility Studies, 23 Feasibility studies, 26 projects in development, five new mines that have gone into production, 12 existing mines that are expanding, 18 merger and acquisition announcements and many new appointments to new positions. The reports cover 43 gold projects, 16 copper, nine coal and silver projects, seven for uranium and iron ore, five rare earths, four each for nickel and molybdenum, three tungsten, two of each of zinc, potash, platinum group metals, lithium and manganese and one each of zirconium, lead, diamonds, cobalt, antimony, tin, aluminium, polymetallic, niobium, tantalum, mineral sands and oil sands. 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. These issues build into a global mine project overview. If you are a supplier – it is full of potential sales leads.
Progress towards a full PFS has been made by Aura Energy at its giant Häggån uranium deposit in central Sweden, with a very positive scoping study. HIghlights include an expected 30 Mt/y operation with a 25 year initial mine life. The company wants to target initial production of 6.6 Mlb (2,995 t) uranium, 14.8 Mlb nickel and 3.6 Mlb molybdenum and use low risk bioheap leach technology similar to that used extensively in the copper industry in Chile. Oracle Coalfields has finally announced initial technical feasibility results for the Block VI project in the Thar Coalfield, Pakistan. If it goes ahead, it would be the country’s first large scale open-pit coal mine. The study is targeting the development of a lignite mining operation to supply a mine-site power station with an annual mine production target of 5 Mt at an overall stripping ratio of 8.54 bcm to one wet tonne lignite. The expected mine life is currently 23 years.
Moving to the US, Orvana Minerals through wholly-owned subsidiary, Orvana Resources US, has announced the highlights of its 43-101-compliant feasibility study for the Copperwood copper project in Michigan. The study foresees a 13-year underground operation that will apply conventional drill-and-blast methods and room-and-pillar mining.The plan calls for the development of a ramp and box cut to access the orebody. Annual production will average about 28,000 short tons of copper concentrate.
Norilsk Nickel has announced the start of design works on the Bugdainskiy Mining and Concentration Plant. In August 2011, the company sent an official request to seven leading designing and engineering companies to provide technical and commercial proposals for the design, and CJSC TOMC-engineering was chosen. The operations at Bugdainskiy are expected to start at the end of 2016, and in 2017 the production is forecast to reach design capacity. Additionally, the group plans to construct 36 km of railways and roads to provide access. Bugdainskiy MCP will produce 16 Mt/y of ore and process it into molybdenum concentrate, containing approximately 9,000 t of molybdenum. BHP Billiton is to restart mining at its Pinto Valley operation in Arizona, USA. The mine, which will produce copper and molybdenum concentrate, will have annual production capacity of approximately 60,000 t of copper in concentrate. The project will create approximately 650 new jobs with mining expected to resume at the end of the 2012 calendar year.
Mines under development include Gindalbie Metals’ Karara iron ore (magnetite) project in Western Australia. The company has announced the award of the ore mining contract to Downer EDI Mining. The contract, which includes provision of drill & blast and load & haul services, is based on a mining rate of approximately 30 Mt/y. This will comprise approximately 20 Mt/y of ore and 10 Mt/y of waste for the production of 8 Mt/y of dry magnetite concentrate, the Stage 1 production rate. Full-scale pre-stripping of the main magnetite orebody is now commencing.
A number of new mines have started full production. Avion Gold has started production operations at its newly developed underground mine at the Tabakoto gold deposit in Mali, West Africa. The first stope blast from the Tabakoto Northwest 1 orebody was fired on February 9, 2012, and ore is currently being extracted from the stope. The entire stope is estimated to contain 10,600 t of ore at an average diluted grade of 4.11 g/t Au. Moving to North America, Scorpio Gold Corp has reported the successful commencement of mining operations at its 70% owned Mineral Ridge gold mine, Nevada – material mined from the Drinkwater pit totalled 387,568 t grading 0.066 oz/t Au, equivalent to 2.26 g/t Au.
The big expansion news is that BHP Billiton has approved a total investment of $2.6 billion in two projects that will underpin higher production at Escondida over the next decade. Organic Growth Project 1 (OGP1) will replace the Los Colorados concentrator with a new 152,000 t/d plant and allow access to higher grade ore located underneath the existing facilities. Construction begins this month with commissioning anticipated the first half of 2015. The project is expected to create up to 7,000 jobs during the construction phase.
Full details on all these projects and information on and contacts for many, many more are to be found in the February 17 issue of International Mining Project News…..
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