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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Juniors, Mid-tiers and Producers

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From: John McCarthy	7/23/2006 8:11:18 PM
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'Huge quantities' of gold up for grabs By Robin Bromby 24jul06 A NEW gold rush is beginning in Victoria - and it's one a former senior government geologist says could produce discoveries to rival those of the fabled rushes of the 1850s. Several companies, including majors like Gold Fields of South Africa and Newcrest Mining, are already drilling or pegging tenements looking for gold the original prospectors never knew was there. Those old-timers targeted the rich quartz reefs and visible gold that was relatively easily found. But this time the hunt is on for what is called disseminated gold, or "invisible gold" - lower-grade material widely dispersed and which is not obvious from surface indications. But that gold is now economical to mine using modern mining technology. CSIRO former head of exploration and mining Neil Phillips will tell the Mineral Council of Australia's first ever gold seminar next Monday that he believes huge quantities of gold remain undiscovered in Victoria. He will outline evidence that the state could contain multiple deposits, each of more than 10 million ounces. Mr Phillips first published studies 10 years ago on his research and has been working with Ballarat-based geological consultant Martin Hughes. Only now are companies starting to sit up and take note. Fellow geologist Ian Buckingham was one who did. His Panaegis Gold listed on the Australian Stock Exchange last month after raising $6 million to hunt down disseminated gold targets in northern Victoria. Gold Fields is understood to have made a discovery on its property but no details have yet been released. Newcrest has picked up land next to where Panaegis is drilling at the old Nagambie gold mine. Oroya Mining and Leviathan Resources are also now in the disseminated gold hunt, while Pacrim Energy has pegged 2000sqkm of exploration licences running south from Echuca in partnership with Gold Fields. Mr Phillips has recently returned from Nevada, collecting further evidence to back up his case. There, in 1962, Newmont Mining found what had been missed by the prospectors 100 years earlier: disseminated gold. And it's now the site of its huge Carlin mine - one of an eventual 20 discoveries along a geological trend that contained 66 million ounces of gold. Newmont was able to extract the gold, the ore being too low-grade for traditional milling, by the then new technology of heap leaching - which essentially involves using cyanide to leach the gold out of the rock. Nevada is now the backbone of the US gold industry, allowing the Americans to retain their place as one of the world's big three gold producers. Mr Phillips said the belt from Bendigo to Benalla had similar characteristics to Nevada and similarly sized deposits could be found here. "We're in elephant territory," he added. He and Mr Hughes calculated that the old prospectors looked at only about one-third of Victoria's gold potential - the proportion that was indicated by surface occurrences. In Mr Phillips's view, the miners of the 19th century may have overlooked the other two-thirds. "If that's the case, there's twice as much as was found before." townsvillebulletin.news.com.au

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