ACCRA (Commodity Online): The 21st century gold rush is happening in Ghana. Even though the West African country is already an established producer of the yellow metal, there is enormous exploration remaining.

The pace is really picking up in Ghana and Australian companies are in the vanguard of the charge.

Latest in the line is Signature Metals, which is outlining its strategy to accelerate development of its Konongo deposit into a producing mine. The plan is to review the existing resource of more than 975,000 ounces with a view to producing more than 100,000oz a year. SBL also has an exploration target at Konongo of up to 2.5 million ounces. Past production at this site totalled 1.6m ounces at an average grade of 11.8 grams/tonne; the open cut operation had cash costs of $US300/oz.

A Canadian company, PMI Corp, is planning to re-open the old Obotan mine operated by Resolute Mining. Another Toronto-listed company, Midland Minerals, is looking to reactivate the Sian gold mine operated by a Chinese company between 2001 and 2004, an operation closed because the Chinese managed to make it uneconomic with a strip ratio of 12:1. Midland believes can prove up a million ounces still sitting there — and engineer the operation better to reduce the amount of overburden to be stripped per ounce of gold.

The leader of the Australian pack in Ghana is Perseus Mining with more than 5m ounces of gold and plenty of money in the bank.

Ghana is one of the world’s top producers of gold, now mining more than five times as much as gold as it did in the early 1990s.  With gold prices at record highs, more companies are rushing to Ghana for a piece of the action.

More than 220 companies are mining or looking for gold in Ghana, one of them is Newmont.  The US-based miner is the world’s second largest gold company.  Newmont has one surface mine in Ghana.  Before it is done, almost half a billion tons of rocks will be blasted out of the ground.

Newmont had to relocate about 10,000 people to make way for its mine.

Newmont’s current mine had a cyanide spill earlier this year, killing fish in a nearby river.  The company says it was a small incident and has been cleaned up.

Newmont is waiting for the Ghanaian government to sign off on the new mine.  The company says its new mine will produce as much gold as its current mine in Ahafo.  Last year, that mine earned Newmont nearly almost $175 million.

Also, Ghana is the second largest producer of cocoa in the world and is also home to Lake Volta, the largest artificial lake in the world. Ghana was adopted as the legal name for the Gold Coast upon independence on March 6, 1957.
(Source: News.com)

Post your comment  (0)

Connect:

Post to Twitter

Post to Facebook