Nickel explorer secures further enviro permits for Philippines project
miningweekly.com
By: Esmarie Swanepoel
25th March 2010
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX- and Aim-listed nickel explorer Rusina Mining has been granted two additional environmental compliance certificates (ECC) for its Acoje nickel chromite project, in the Philippines.
An ECC, which is issued by the Philippines’ Department of Environment and Natural Resources through the Environmental Management Bureau, is the principal permit for mining operation within the Philippines.
The new ECCs cover the construction and operation of the full-scale nickel heap-leach project, as well as the separate operation of surface/underground mining and the processing of chromite ores at Acoje. The project already has two existing ECCs that allow the direct shipping of nickel laterite ores in addition to the operation of a nickel laterite pilot heap-leach facility.
Rusina is developing the Acoje heap-leach project in partnership with UK-based European Nickel, which is earning a 40% project interest by spending $10-million on the feasibility study.
Envisaged, is the extraction of three-million tons a year of nickel laterite ore by surface mining for ten years in 400 ha out of the 3 675 ha of the Acoje tenement.
The permits allow for heap-leach processing of the nickel laterite ore through a plant comprising of an agglomerator, heap leach pads with 40 modules of approximately 63 000 m3 of ore per module, five process ponds and a precipitation plant for the recovery of metals from the pregnant solution.
Further a sulphuric acid plant is permitted to provide up to 4 545 t of 98,5% sulphuric acid for the heap leach processing plant as well as to provide steam for the 36 MW power plant.
This chromite mining certificate is an enhancement of and extension to the ECC issued for the nickel direct shipping pre (DSO) operations, and allows for surface and underground mining rate of 415 800 t/y of chromite ore and 315 000 t/y of chromite laterite ore.
The ECC also covers a processing plant for chromite with a production capacity of 378 000 t/y, and the construction of all access roads, storage facilities, tailings ponds and silt traps, mine facilities, power and port as relevant to the chromite project. It further allowed for the extraction of one-million tons a year of nickel laterite for the DSO.
In a statement on Thursday, Rusina said that there were still several ECC conditions to be satisfied or permits issued before either the nickel heap leach project or the chromite mining project could start construction. A number of these involve the revision or continuation of existing conditions from the previous ECCs.
Rusina completed a prefeasibility study on Acoje in 2008, and those findings outlined an economically viable nickel project based on a $6/lb nickel price with a ten-year mine life embedded in an initial resource of 30,8-million tons at 1,12% nickel and 0,05% cobalt.
Further studies and drilling since, have suggested the three-million ton a year project could provide a successful nickel-chrome mining operation for at least twice that period, with the current resource now in excess of 50-million tons and rising as broad-based infill drilling continues as part of the current definitive feasibility study at Acoje and Rusina’s neighbouring Zambales nickel/chrome deposits.
Based on Filipino economic laws, Acoje’s processing stage is able to fall within a ‘special economic zone’, giving the proposed mine a six-year tax holiday and a modest corporate tax rate of 5% after that. |
