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ACCRA (Commodity Online): The21st century gold rush is happening in Ghana. Even though the WestAfrican 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.
Latestin the line is Signature Metals, which is outlining its strategy toaccelerate development of its Konongo deposit into a producing mine.The plan is to review the existing resource of more than 975,000 ounceswith a view to producing more than 100,000oz a year. SBL also has anexploration target at Konongo of up to 2.5 million ounces. Pastproduction at this site totalled 1.6m ounces at an average grade of11.8 grams/tonne; the open cut operation had cash costs of $US300/oz.
ACanadian company, PMI Corp, is planning to re-open the old Obotan mineoperated by Resolute Mining. Another Toronto-listed company, MidlandMinerals, is looking to reactivate the Sian gold mine operated by aChinese company between 2001 and 2004, an operation closed because theChinese 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 tobe 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.
Ghanais one of the world’s top producers of gold, now mining more than fivetimes as much as gold as it did in the early 1990s. With gold pricesat record highs, more companies are rushing to Ghana for a piece of theaction.
More than 220 companies are mining or looking for goldin Ghana, one of them is Newmont. The US-based miner is the world’ssecond largest gold company. Newmont has one surface mine in Ghana.Before it is done, almost half a billion tons of rocks will be blastedout of the ground.
Newmont had to relocate about 10,000 people to make way for its mine.
Newmont’scurrent mine had a cyanide spill earlier this year, killing fish in anearby river. The company says it was a small incident and has beencleaned up.
Newmont is waiting for the Ghanaian government tosign off on the new mine. The company says its new mine will produceas much gold as its current mine in Ahafo. Last year, that mine earnedNewmont nearly almost $175 million.
Also, Ghana is the secondlargest producer of cocoa in the world and is also home to Lake Volta,the largest artificial lake in the world. Ghana was adopted as thelegal name for the Gold Coast upon independence on March 6, 1957.
(Source: News.com)