changing the geography of the cote-gold IAMGOLD propertySome points of interest
(1)Driverless haulage trucks
(2)Moving a lake for access to the open pit gold zone
(3)Realigning local streams
Anyone who is not disinterested….read on
Also any Rainy Mountain Royalty shareholders who also own IMG SHARES MIGHT BE INTERESTED in the link below.
https://www.timminspress.com/2018/06/07/iamgold-breaking-new-ground-with-cote-mine `
Timmins Daily Press
The following are some exerpts from the link
GOGAMA - THE COTE-GOLD PROJECT presents some unique technical challenges, …..such things as moving a lake and using driverless haulage trucks.
. Work is expected to begin on a new open pit mine in the new year.
Steve Bowles….manager of the project….“I have worked in many countries in the past with all the IAMGOLD projects, and by far this is the best location I have seen to date.”
He also mentioned the project is close to a highway, a high voltage electrical line, mining supply communities and a railway link.
Bowles explained that one of the key challenges will be dewatering the actual lake which is atop the open pit gold zone. The company will have to compensate by creating a new lake nearby. This will involve building small dams and re-aligning local streams to channel water into the new lake. All of this had to be approved through the environmental assessment process
.
Bowles said some of the major jobs in the first half of 2019 will be the creation of access roads and the mining camp. The company will also start pre-stripping the area for the pit and to start excavating foundations for the processing plant
.
Another significant change said Bowles would be introduction of driverless haulage trucks to move ore from the open pit to the mill.
“We also decided to move forward with autonomous haulage systems, essentially to move ore and waste without any operators in our trucks,” he said.
Despite the novelty of the idea, Bowles said it is actually a mature technology that has been proved at mines in Australia and Chile.
Bowles said part of the process will be consulting with existing mine operators that use the technology so that when IAMGOLD is ready to move forward, it “can hit the ground running.”
“We do want to develop in our business as a core competency an ability to integrate new technologies that are game changers for us that drive economic value and to help support local supply chain around this,” said Bowles.
He said the hope is to build more technical expertise on maintaining and operating the autonomous systems that will drive more value in the local community.
While there might be a concern that the driverless trucks would mean fewer jobs, Bowles said there was economic gain for the mine and the creation of new technological expertise.
“The economics of having less labour involved in the mine really helped us secure the business case for Cot,” he added.
“It does create new jobs as well in terms of technicians and maintenance personnel that need to implement and support these kinds of systems. We have seen that in other operations,” he added.
Bowles said because the trucks are driverless, there will be a need to install more safety measures and have technicians who can oversee the safety measures in the event there is a problem.
He added that by witnessing the new driverless systems in place at other mines, no one has seen any significant safety problems.
He said the system would also require extensive maintenance on the haulage roads. He added that because there is no operator driving the vehicle, the trucks are operated within acceptable parameters. Bowles said the trucks tend to last longer and use fewer parts, which is also a money saver
.
“We feel very confident moving forward with this and helping the Timmins and Sudbury areas establish themselves with this type of technology and that local support.”
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RMO’s Brunswick property is about 20 km northeast of IAMGOLD’s Cote-gold elephant
Get out your elephant gun Robert M.
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Also refer to following link
https://www.iamgold.com/English/operations/reserves-and-resource-summary/default.aspx and from above link….
“Consistent with National Instrument 43-101, resources are divided into “inferred,” “indicated” and “measured” based on the level of geological confidence in the mineralization,
and reserves, into “probable” and “proven” upon at least a pre-feasibility study having been undertaken on the indicated and measured resources. Measured and indicated resources are inclusive of proven and probable reserves.
Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability and are not guaranteed to have economic viability. Inferred resources are too speculative geologically to have any economic considerations applied to them that would allow a translation into reserves.”
Also view summaries
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& JUST A SIDE NOTE
Going solar
https://www.mining.com/burkina-faso-gold-mine-build-solar-hybrid-power-plant/ IAMGOLD plans to install a 15-megawatt solar-power plant at its Essakane mine (West Africa)
Using solar is a way for IAMGOLD to cut its diesel use and lower its carbon footprint – a path it started in 2014 with a 5MW solar plant installed at its Rosebel gold mine in Suriname.
According to
Mining Weekly the project is EREN's second utility-scale project in Africa and will be one of the largest hybrid diesel solar photovoltaic projects in the world.