Eight years after signing an agreement with the Government of Guyana for a gold mining project at Toroparu, in Region Seven, Canadian mining company Sandspring Resources says it is finalising a preliminary economic assessment for the project.
“Sandspring Resources is putting the finishing touches on a preliminary economic assessment for its Toroparu gold project in Guyana that rescopes the project’s prefeasibility study, and includes a third gold pit. It aims to table the study in a couple of months,” The Northern Miner reported last week.
The Canadian weekly trade journal quotes Sandspring’s CEO Rich Munson, in an interview with the publication, as saying, “All we’re really doing is building this same concept, the same conceptual operating plan that we had in 2013–2014. We’re just building it in two separate phases.”
The project’s resource is split between three proposed open pits — Toroparu, SE Zone and Sona Hill — with most of the tonnage and contained gold at the main Toroparu pit, Northern Miner stated.
In total, the project has 252.5 million measured and indicated tonnes grading 0.91 gramme gold for 7.35 million oz. gold, and 128.9 million inferred tonnes at 0.76 gramme gold for 3.15 million oz. gold.
It also has 240.7 million measured and indicated tonnes at 0.81 gramme silver and 0.08% copper for 6.28 million oz. silver and 444 million lb. copper, as well as 117.3 million inferred tonnes at 0.07 gramme silver and 0.04% copper for 276,000 oz. silver and 104 million lb. copper.
Sona Hill contains no copper or silver.
Sandspring plans to mine Sona Hill along with the Toroparu main pit and SE Zone simultaneously, opening up some of the higher-grade, gold-only zones around the main pit before starting an expansion phase in year five.
Back in 2011, under then president Bharrat Jagdeo, Sandspring signed a US multi-million dollar gold/copper mining agreement with the government, which it then believed would have seen some 1,000 jobs being created for the Toroparu, Region Seven project.
The signing paved the way for the US$600 million to US$700 million investment to go on stream and the company had said that production was expected to have been between 250,000 to 300,000 ounces of gold and 20 million pounds of copper over a 15-year period. According to the company, at the then current prices, the mine would have contributed approximately US$550,000,000 annually to Guyana‘s Gross Domestic Product.
Two years later, in April 2013, and under the Donald Ramotar administration, the government and CM Power Company, a subsidiary of Sandspring Resources/ ETK Inc., inked a Memorandum of Understanding for a feasibility study for construction of a hydropower plant at the Kumarau Falls on the Kurupung River.
The company said in a statement that the project would have been located approximately 50 km southwest of Toroparu. It was estimated that the hydropower project could support more than 100 megawatts of run-of-river hydroelectric capacity. An initial 50-megawatt run-of-river facility would support the Toroparu Project and other enterprises located within 120 km of the power plant. Sandspring estimated that the use of hydroelectric power could reduce its cash operating costs by US$60 to US$80 per ounce of gold produced. Such a reduction would not only result in significant cost savings over the life of the Toroparu Project, but also increase the economic viability of mining additional resources not currently in its mine plan, the statement said.
Sandspring’s CEO, in his interview with Northern Miner, played up the turbine driven hydro-power potential of the company. “That run-of-river of course would replace diesel, which we would otherwise be burning for the entire life of the project,” Munson said. “It brings a really interesting green dimension. Even if we bring it on in year eight of this extended mine life, it still would save us about US$400 million of operating expenses, and almost eliminate our carbon foot print from the middle of the rainforest. “The name Guyana in one of the Amerindian languages means land of many waters…There isn’t one hydro project in this country. This would be the first commercial one,” he added.
In November of 2015, and under the David Granger led APNU+AFC coalition, Minister with responsibility for Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman and Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson, visited the mine at Toroparu, and said pleased with the company.
Following that visit, a statement from the Ministry of the Presidency said that the visit to Toroparu was intended to give Trotman an overview of the company’s operations and to enlighten Patterson on the hydropower project being undertaken by the company to support the running of its day to day activities.
It noted that the Toroparu Project, which was still in its exploration stages, was expected to be larger than the Guyana Goldfields/Aurora Gold Mines Project and Troy Resources, Karouni Gold Project. As a result, Trotman noted that the visit was a necessity.
Trotman last Tuesday said that “government continues to work with the principals to have [the] mining process accelerated.”
