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The West Australian: Big fall coming for gold as miners post stellar results – ECR Minerals #ECR
Stuart McKinnon – The West Australian
Australia’s gold production is tipped to slump to a “generational low” by 2022 despite it being on track for a 26-year high of 10.2 million ounces next year.
S&P Global Market Intelligence attributed the rapidly slowing production to short mine lives of recent start-ups and other significant mines approaching the end of their lives.
“We are forecasting a 9 per cent fall year-over-year in 2020 and we expect the country’s production to reach a generational low of 6.8Moz by 2022, a 33 per cent drop within only three years,” S&P analyst Chris Galbraith said.
“Many smaller mines are also expected to start winding down, such as Cracow, Mungari, South Kalgoorlie and Paulsens.”
The prediction comes as a trio of Aussie gold miners yesterday reported stellar full-year results from their respective operations.
Saracen Mineral Holdings posted a 100 per cent surge in underlying profit to $67.3 million on the back of a 16 per cent rise in production to a record 316,453oz.
The Raleigh Finlayson-led miner said it would more than triple its exploration budget from $17 million last year to $60 million over the next five years.
St Barbara announced underlying profit of $202 million, up 26 per cent on the previous year, after producing a record 403,089oz in the period at record low all-in sustaining costs of $891/oz.
The Bob Vassie-headed company declared a final dividend of 8¢ a share fully franked, up from 6¢ last year.
Silver Lake Resources posted a net profit of $16.2 million, up from $2 million the previous year. The result was achieved on the back of a 16 per cent increase in gold production to 157,936oz and a 5 per cent reduction in all-in sustaining costs to $1289/oz.
Newcrest Mining’s underlying profit rose 16 per cent to $US459 million. Australia’s biggest gold miner declared a final fully franked dividend of US11¢, up from a partially franked US7.5¢ the previous year.
Find the original article by The West Australian here
The West Australian: There’s gold in them there trees – ECR Minerals #ECR
By Matt Birney – The West Australian
In a move that might have the environmental mafia scratching their heads, Classic Minerals and Australia’s federal scientific research outfit CSIRO have teamed up to study the potential correlation of tree size to gold mineralisation at Classic’s Forrestania Gold Project in Western Australia.
The company said that in 2017, it had noticed a correlation between tree size and gold mineralisation at the project in the Goldfields region.
Major deposits and prospects such as Lady Magdalene and Lady Ada were covered by large gum trees while barren areas were covered by typical Yilgarn shrubs and bush.
CSIRO and the Australian Government’s Innovation Connections grant will fund the majority of the six month project.
Activities to be carried out include the production of a distribution map in tree sizes by image analysis, hylogging and additional sampling of selected holes.
Extensive rockchip and regolith sampling will also be carried out throughout the curious project.
The program will generate a high-quality mineralogical and geochemical dataset including integration of geology databases and will determine the spatial relationships between the tree sizes, the landscape and the mineralised areas via statistical data analysis.
Whilst the technique is not likely to put traditional drilling contractors out of business anytime soon, it just might make them a little nervous.
If proven to work, it will allow Classic to rapidly generate new targets without ground disturbing exploration.
The project could help guide the company with geochemical sampling and geochemical data interpretation on the surface.
It may also help assess mineralisation at depth and the relationship to landscape and tree size.
Classic Chief Executive Officer Dean Goodwin said: “It quickly became apparent from field work that there appears to be a relationship between tree-size and mineralisation at FGP – we are glad to follow up this theory with CSIRO because it will help us better understand the geology and controls on mineralisation in FGP.”
“As an exploration geologist, it is always exciting to be adding to the datasets available to us for target generation and geological theories.”
“Having CSIRO undertaking this research project alongside Classic will allow us to share and validate our own hypothesis and research efforts/data that we have been working on for the past 12+ months.”
Whilst somewhat unusual, this is not the first time that trees have been thought to be a potential indicator of gold mineralisation.
The CSIRO has previously published research showing that Eucalyptus trees in Western Australia’s Kalgoorlie region are drawing up gold particles from the earth via their extensive root system and depositing the gold in their leaves and branches.
As eucalypt roots extend tens of metres into the ground, this could indicate the presence of gold ore deposits buried under sediments that are up to 60 million years old without the need to drill.
Last month, Classic started a follow-up drilling program at 4 major prospect areas at Forrestania.
Drilling at Lady Magdalene is aimed at better defining the orientation of high-grade cross cutting gold lodes in order to sweeten the large, shear-hosted system currently grading 1.32g/t for just over 180,000 ounces.
The similarity of these lodes to those found at the nearby historic Lady Ada mine, has given Classic reason to believe that Lady Magdalene might also be hosting a high-grade gold deposit.
Forrestania has an existing Mineral Resource of 5.9 million tonnes grading 1.25 grams per tonne gold for 240,000 ounces of contained gold.
Classic’s partnership with CSIRO is fascinating and will no doubt get a few geological wags talking.
Who knows, maybe the geologists of the future will have their ore bodies marked out before smoko just by looking at the trees – stranger things have happened I guess.