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PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Gold miner Resolute Mining would spend between A$10-million and A$15-million on a feasibility study at its recently acquired Bibiani gold project, in Ghana, during the next year, CEO Peter Sullivan said.
Speaking to Mining Weekly Online on the sidelines of Paydirt’s Africa Downunder conference, in Perth, Sullivan noted that a key part of this expenditure would go towards a 20 000 m drill programme to better understand the resource.
Resolute acquired the Bibiani project from fellow-listed Noble Mineral Resources in December last year, after that company went into voluntary administration. The project was placed on care and maintenance in May this year.
“Bibiani is a well developed site, so for us, the feasibility study is just a mine planning exercise to restart production,” Sullivan said.
The project, which was currently estimated to host an indicated and inferred resource of 15.3-million tonnes, at 3.4 g/t gold for 1.7-million ounces of gold, included a three-million-tonne-a-year carbon-in-leach processing facility.
Sullivan noted that Resolute would look to restart the underground operation at a rate of between 1-million and 1.5-million tonnes a year.
“We would mine the underground operation at a rate that we can best manage, which at current standards is between 1-million and 1.5-million tonnes a year, which would see Bibiani become a substantial producer in its own right, at the grade we are seeing.”
The feasibility study would take an estimated two years to complete, but Sullivan was hopeful that Resolute could complete the study before the end of that period.