Great Basin Gold (TSX: T.GBG, Stock Forum); (AMEX: GBG, Stock Forum) Wednesday said it has entered into an ore purchase agreement with Newmont Mining to sell up to a maximum of 50,000 ore tons, but not less than 35,000 ore tons, currently stockpiled at its Hollister property in Nevada. In terms of the agreement, Newmont will settle 75% of the estimated value of the ore within five days after delivery at a fixed metal price of US$1,000/oz for gold and US$17/oz for silver. Great Basin expects to recover approximately 28,000 gold equivalent ounces with estimated net proceeds of US$26.3 million in terms of this agreement.
Great Basin Gold reported that the Hollister project resulted in the extraction of 25,777 ore tons containing an estimated 27,707 gold equivalent ounces at a grade of 1.07 oz per ton gold equivalent (34.8 g/t gold equivalent) in its most recent (third) quarter, a 40% improvement on the previous (Dec 2009) quarter.
Also, Rodeo Creek Gold, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Great Basin, has received confirmation from the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that the Notice of Intent (NOI) to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the Hollister Project was published in the Federal Register (FR) on Monday, April 19, 2010. The NOI is a public notification of the BLM's intent to prepare an EIS for the Hollister Project to take the project from an exploration and bulk sampling status to full production status. The FR notice briefly describes the project and also serves as notification of the public scoping meetings, which are tentatively planned for early May.
"The management team at our Hollister and Esmeralda operations in Nevada continue to make good progress in delivering what is probably one of the most interesting gold projects in that region. The publication of the NOI was within the time frame anticipated by the company. While waiting for the NOI process to be completed, Rodeo Creek, in conjunction with the third-party EIS contractor and the BLM, was actively gathering information, developing various field survey protocols and a groundwater hydrology model, as well as drafting the first two chapters of the EIS," said Great Basin President and CEO Ferdi Dippenaar.
For more insight into the Great Basin Gold story please read the column by Ticker Trax’s Thom Calandra.