Canadian gold mining company, Guyana Goldfields plans to start surface and open pit development at its Aurora gold project in the next quarter of this year and will release the findings of a definitive feasibility study (FS) on the project in late February following a four-week peer review.
In a statement last week, the company’s Vice President, Corporate Communications, Jacqueline Wagenaar said that in the last few months, various peer reviews of specific disciplines have been completed and some are ongoing. “The Senior Executives and the Board of Directors want to ensure that all aspects presented in the FS are current, manageable and optimized. This will allow the Board and Executives to perform a full evaluation of the optimized results for the Aurora Project from a Net Present Value (NPV), Internal Rate of Return (IRR), pay-back period and finance ability perspective to the maximum benefit of Guyana Goldfields and its shareholders,” she said.
The Aurora Project will be the first underground gold mine in the Guiana Shield. Production is set to begin in 2014 at the location along the banks of the Cuyuni River in Region Seven. Earlier this year, Claude Lemasson, the President and Chief Operating Officer of the company said that it is looking to produce 250,000 ounces of gold per year in a combination open pit and underground mining and expects that this will increase as further studies are done.
Wagenaar said that as the final components of work are coming to a conclusion, the Feasibility Study team can confirm some key parameters on the mine framework for the Aurora Gold Project. In this regard she said that the project will consist of a combination of open pit and underground mining for a mine life of 22 years based on the current measured and indicated resource of 5.71 million ounces.
Initially, surface and open pit development is expected to commence in quarter two of 2012 for 24 months while open pit production is expected to begin in quarter two 2014 and carry on for eight years. Open Pit Mining is expected to include six pits within a square mile, with bottom depths varying from 70 to 315 metres. Underground development is scheduled to commence in 2015 with commercial production expected to commence in 2019 and will carry on for 16 years. Milling will be through a SAG mill and Ball mill combination with design throughput of 8,000 tonnes per day. The statement said that average annual gold production for years two to nine is expected to be about 250,000 ounces.
The statement said that power will be provided from on-site Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) Power Generators. It made no mention of a hydro-power plant that the company initially said it would construct. Last year Lemasson had stressed that the project complies with IFC (the private sector arm of the World Bank) and other international standards and noted the potential use of hydropower. He said they are looking at a 15 megawatt hydropower facility costing between US$75 million to US$100 million with possible financing from the company, the IFC, other development agencies and other private sector partners.
“With a Mineral Agreement in place with the Guyanese Government and having received the Aurora Gold Project Mining License the Company is poised to officially start development and construction of the Aurora Gold Project in Q2 2012,” the statement last week said.
In an initial project summary submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency, the company had said that the development and operation of the mine site will involve construction and operation of the mine site, construction and operation of a hydropower plant on the Cuyuni River, construction of an access road to the mine site, and construction and operation of a wharf at Buck Hall on the Essequibo River.
Guyana Goldfields has been operating here since 1996 and has invested $17 billion in exploration from then up to 2010.
