Tagged with: PayDirt

Mar 2010 - Gold Mining Costs

Gold Mining Industry Facing Rising Costs

At the recent Paydirt Gold Conference in March 2010,delegates were surprised to hear that the cash costs of Gold Fields’ (GFI’s) South African operations were US$650/oz, with total costs of US$900/oz. And in response to a second question, that costs were expected to rise by 10% just on the doubling in power costs over the next 3 years.

Mar 2010 - Epithermal Trends

Do Epithermals Usually have at Least 2 Trends?

It may be sheer coincidence but we could not help noticing a number of similarities between some epithermal deposits after visiting NQM’s Pajingo in September 2009, NCM/CAH’s (Newcrest/Catalpa’s) Cracow (also in Queensland) in January 2010, attending Paydirt’s NewGen conference in November 2009 and see Andean present Cerro Negro, followed by Exeter Resources presenting Cerro Moro.

Apr 2010 - 5g/t Rule of Thumb

Is it Time to Reduce the
“5g/t Rule of Thumb” ?

Underground mining has a number of “rules of thumb”, one of which that has stood the test of time, is that for most mines you need 5g/t in order to mine underground. And if it is refractory add 20% so it becomes 6g/t.

At 5g/t it meant that the mine should be able to achieve a capital return and return the invested money back, allowing for the odd occasional thing to go wrong – or in other words provide a reasonable margin for error.

Jun 2010 - Paste Failures

Paste Failures Provide a “Wake-Up” Call

I must admit that when I first encountered paste being used to fill stopes instead of concreted tailings and the way it behaved, I thought “WOW this is fantastic, looks like rock, fills the void perfectly, can be cable bolted, can be mined against, etc”. So it is understandable how complacency occurred, and why failures in the past year have been met with surprise.

Aug 2010 - Floating Quartz

Current Trends Include “Floating” Quartz Rocks.

We have noticed a number of trends (being at least 3 occurrences) among the different companies that we have analysed so far this year since January 2010. Those trends mostly include cyclone upgrades, proposed ventilation shafts, possible drill drives and significantly deeper drilling, EM plates, visible gold, stamp batteries, plant upgrades and newly commissioned plants, and fields of quartz resulting from “floating” quartz rocks.

Sep 2010 - PDU Fires up...

PDU fires up the West African Golds

Any doubts anyone may have had about Burkina Faso being the current world exploration “hot-spot” were quickly dispelled by the behaviour of the West African gold shares in the week of PDU (Paydirt Down Under) in early September 2010.

Nov 2010 - Patagonian Epi's

Two Very Different Patagonian Epithermals

In late October 2010, we visited two very different epithermal deposits in the Deseado Massif of Patagonia in Southern Argentina, namely Mariana’s Las Calandrias and Extorre’s Cerro Moro.

Dec 2010 - Mega Gold Mines

The Mega Gold Mines are Coming

In the SMH of 29 November 2010, it was reported that the Kalgoorlie Super Pit was Australia’s biggest producer in the September Quarter of 2010 with 202,000oz, followed by the new Boddington mine at 180,000ozpa. Both mines producing ~800,000ozpa.

Feb 2011 - The Fuzzy Clock

The Clock's Fuzzy!

The latest update on the lion “clock” by the Lion Selection group release on the 28 February 2011, has it about half-way through a possibly shorter cycle this time. The clock used to work quite well – at least for two 10-year cycles to 1997 and 2008, but appears to have become ”Fuzzy” as illustrated by the numerous IPOs and exploration occurring before, during and after the mergers, not after as shown in Figure 1.

Apr 2011 - The Key to Edna May

“New” Techniques Unravel the Key to Edna May

Catalpa’s initial asset was the old Edna May mine and surrounding tenements along the Westonia Greenstone Belt, on the northern outskirts of the town of Westonia, about halfway between Perth and Kalgoorlie (or ~310km east of Perth).

Jun 2011 - Broken Hill Conf

Broken Hill's New May Addition to the Mining Conference Calendar

We attended the inaugural Resources and Energy Symposium (RES) 2011 Conference held one week after the May RIU conference in Sydney and run by Kerry Stevenson's Symposium Company. Innovatively, the profits from the RES conference go into a scholarship program that provides funds to educate students wanting to undertake tertiary education within the resources field.

Jul 2011 - Carbon Tax

Gold Sector expected to pay $3bn by 2020 or ~A$40/oz from July 2012

Or at least that was the expectation in a MCA presentation at the Annual Stockbrokers' Conference in Sydney in late May 2011. At that conference, 3 papers were presented on the planned Carbon Tax (one by the MCA and two by Deutsche Bank) that appeared to cover most of the issues associated with it.

Aug 2011 - Dealer of the Year

The Dealer of the Year was...

...quite surprisingly Ivanhoe for its Oyu Tolgoi transaction with RIO, at this years' Diggers 'n Dealers Conference in Kalgoorlie from 1 to 3 August 2011. It came as a surprise to many that it was not either Equinox, Andean or Alacer, especially as (we assume) share price appreciation should have been one of the main factors.

Sep 2011 - The Devil you...

...than the one you don't, or so the saying goes

You have to wonder whether Australia's proposed introduction of the RSPT has awakened a sleeping dragon with many countries applying new taxes and announcing mining restrictions since then. Even the individual states of Australia are applying increased royalties.

Oct 2011 - Salt Lakes

Using Salt Lakes as an Exploration tool

The following is based purely on observation. However, the fact is that when salt lakes have straight line edges, they appear to have been due to underlying structures - which is a logical afterthought.