18/03/2010
Australia's OZ Minerals Ltd says early work at its Cambodian gold project has found an inferred resource of 605,000 ounces, spurring it to continue more exploration in the region.
OZ Minerals' Cambodian operations are the miner's only advanced exploration play outside of its core operation at South Australia's Prominent Hill copper and gold mine.
The company was forced to sell-off nearly all its key assets last year to dig itself out of crippling debt, leaving it with Prominent Hill as its only producing mine.
After the sell-off, it was left with about $1.08 billion in cash.
The initial inferred that mineral resources at its Okvau project in Cambodia were for 8.1 million tonnes at 2.3 grams per tonne, for 605,000 ounces of gold, the company said.
"OZ Minerals considers the initial Okvau mineral resources as a foundation asset from which to build its resource base," the company said in a statement.
"The next phase of exploration in Cambodia will aim to give OZ Minerals a clear indication of the potential for more than two million ounces of gold in the Okvau district," it said.
"OZ Minerals remains confident of discovering further Okvau-style mineralisation and adding to the current resource inventory," it said.
Previously, OZ Minerals has indicated it will only consider developing gold operations that have a resource of more than two million ounces.
Stock Resource managing director Grant Craighead said that while there was certainly a lot of gold at the deposit, OZ Minerals still had much work to do before it could move the project beyond the exploration phase.
"The attributes of this deposit are that it has relatively narrow vein structures so mining has to be a bit selective, which means expensive," Mr Craighead said.
"The grade looks a bit skinny for a vein deposit, so they either need to find a lot more tonnes or significantly more grade before it becomes material to OZ Minerals and attractive in general," he said.
Oz Minerals shares closed down two cents or 1.71 per cent at $1.15.
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Initial Mineral Resource for Cambodian Gold Project
Thursday, Mar 18, 2010
OZ Minerals is pleased to announce initial JORC compliant Inferred Mineral Resource at the Okvau project in Cambodia of 8.1 million tonnes at 2.3g/t gold for 605,000 ounces of contained gold (at a 0.5g/t cut-off).
These Mineral Resources have been outlined from 10,559m of drilling undertaken since mid 2006. The Resource has been defined based on a geological model that extends 400m along strike and covers 500m of the width of the mineralised vein systems. The model is constrained down to a vertical depth of 400 metres. Mineralisation is open both to the southeast and at depth. Gold mineralisation is associated with complex veining within a fault zone system. Preliminary metallurgical studies on four composite samples of Okvau mineralisation indicate that gold recoveries of greater than 85% may be achieved via conventional leaching without the requirement for an oxidation stage.
Source: OZ Minerals
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