Could this mean more than 3 PGM mines down the road?
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SA Gov opens door to pgm sector
By: Stewart Bailey
Posted: 2002/05/29 Wed 19:25 ZE2 | © Miningweb 1997-2002
JOHANNESBURG – The South African government will open the door to the country's platinum industry within weeks, after it received a flood of applications to mine and prospect PGM-bearing land tenements in the Eastern Bushveld.
Jacinto Rocha, the chief director of minerals regulation in South Africa's department of minerals and energy, told Miningweb the ministry had received more than 200 applications to mine and explore the 13 properties on the Eastern limb of the bushveld complex. The farms in question were released in December 2000 as part of a deal between Anglo Platinum and the government, which allowed the world number one platinum producer to hang on to a suite of properties in the region, after its joint venture with the erstwhile Lebowa government (a defunct tinpot government manufactured by the apartheid administration) was dissolved.
Rocha said the initial list of more than 200 applications had been trimmed to a shortlist of less than 50. He would not name the hopefuls.
He said the application process would be finalised in matter of weeks, where applicants would be grilled by a panel to determine the veracity of their business and mining plans.
The properties relinquished by Angloplat were mainly those deep areas down-dip of their own properties; the giant is not known for its altruistic business qualities and accordingly, held on to the more attractive outcropping areas and properties along strike.
International interest – the usual suspects
Rocha said both South African and foreign groups had applied for the right to prospect and the right to mine the land. The international applicants, he said, were mainly those mining companies which already had an operating base in South Africa. The obvious candidates in this respect are Canadian-listed Southern Era, which is the major shareholder in the Messina platinum mine; Aquarius Platinum, which has operations and prospects in both the Eastern and Western Bushveld complex; and Placer Dome, which has 50 percent of the South Deep gold project on the Witwatersrand, has long craved an entry into the Platinum market. Gold Fields, too, has billed itself as a precious metals company and could have joined the fray.
Prospecting first
"Most of the applications were for prospecting; they want to determine exactly what is there," said Rocha. He said that while Angloplat had ceded its mineral rights to the old Lebowa Minerals Trust properties, the company had not volunteered any of the geological information pertaining to the resources.
But that could all change once the government's new 'use-it-or-lose-it' mining law is promulgated later this year. Rocha says the new law will allow government access to geological information on properties, given the tax concessions it grants companies against their exploration expenditure.
The new law will have far-reaching implications beyond retrieving exploration data, though. Rocha says it is also possible still more platinum mining and prospecting licenses in the bushveld complex will be granted once the new law comes into effect. "Those would be in the bushveld complex," he says, although he adds that the government would not consider reallocating any existing operations, but only properties that ran foul of the 'use-it-or-lose-it' law.
Rocha said the successful applications would have a black empowerment component, which would be thoroughly checked and verified. Southern Era is reported to have an alliance with black-controlled diversified mining house Mvelaphanda aimed at snagging an all-important property adjoining Messina and Aquarius executives have long spoken of their intentions to enter into an empowerment alliance. |
