Wanted: A Former PhD Student Who Can Explain The Ardala License To Owners Ariana Resources
By Our Man in the City
minesite.com
Gaining the support of mid-tier producer European Goldfields has re-awakened investor interest in Turkey-based gold explorer, Ariana Resources. It's a show of strength to have a partner of the calibre of European Goldfields, which has always been well liked by City analyst. European Goldfields has taken a 20 per cent stake in Ariana and will fund exploration on prospects in north east Turkey. However, Ariana managing director Kerim Sener is eager to play down the importance of the new investor to his company's fortunes. Kerim's reserved reaction to Minews’ questions about the joint venture suggests that Ariana wants credit for its own achievements and for the European Goldfields partnership to earn its merits only once exploration begins this summer.
“Our main focus will continue to be west Turkey,” says Mr Sener, eager to dive straight into details of Ariana's WAVE projects, a handful of prospects that includes Sindirgi, formerly owned by Newmont. Although split into five target regions, the Kiziltepe zone accounts for the bulk of Sindirgi's 135,000 ounce resource estimate. An updated resource is due imminently, and that will be followed by a scoping study on building a treatment plant that could potentially serve multiple deposits across western Turkey.
“We're hoping to produce 25,000 to 30,000 ounces of gold a year with first production in 2010. It's relatively small output but enough to make us a self-funding business while we look for the big discovery that the majors will want,' says Mr Sener.
The latest addition to Ariana's expansion plans is Tavsan, a project passed from Teck Cominco to Odyssey Resources, but with little exploration to its name. Ariana become the latest owner of Tavsan at the end of March, after it spent nine months conducting technical and legal due diligence on the project, which it hopes contains 200,000 ounces of gold.
So although he may push to play down the significance of European Goldfields' involvement in Ariana, the producer's investment comes at a welcome time. The imminent share placing will raise more than enough money to pay for Tavsan. After that the next hurdle will be to convince the Turkish authorities that the large number of trees covering Tavsan could be replaced with a new forest in a different location. A similar argument has been fought by European Nickel for the past two years with little progress.
“The Turkish government is in support of gold mining, as there are already four producing operations in the country. Harvesting and replacing forests haven't been a problem before, yet European Nickel seems to be the odd one out. No-one is certain why the government is still opposing the removal of pine trees”, says Mr Sener.
Environmental permitting problems in Turkey aren’t confined to European Nickel, however. Ariana is part of the Gold Mining Association, a consortium of 23 exploration and producing companies that boasts Newmont as its big hitter which aims to counter any negative press towards Turkish mining. “There's often a poor understanding of the mining industry and everyone focuses on the use of cyanide. This is strange, considering the State-owned silver mining business is the country's largest user of cyanide. We aim to promote the benefits of mining to the economy”, says Mr Sener.
While green issues may not yet be keeping Ariana awake at night, Kerim is currently distracted by more pressing matters, namely tracking down the author of a PhD on Ardala, the primary target for exploration by the Ariana and European Goldfields joint venture. AngloGold explored part of the site in the 1990s but the drill cores were thrown out when it abandoned the project. “The only documented evidence of AngloGold's drilling is in a PhD submitted in 1994 by a mining student at Southampton University,” says Kerim. “I've seen the report but could only record a small part because of copyright restrictions. Ideally, we need the author to come on site and help us, but we haven't been able to track the person down.” If the former student is reading, the company is eager to hear from you. MinersReunited.com? - now there's an idea worth prospecting. |
