Gold miners cutting exploration: Gold Institute
Platt's Metals Week, 9 Nov 1998, p 11, Financial Times, 5 Nov 1998, p 30, Mining Engineering, Oct 1998, p 23
A survey by the Gold Institute reveals that leading gold mining companies in the USA and Canada are expected to cut expenditure on exploration by an estimated 28% to under $420 million in 1998. This follows cuts of 9% to $582 million in 1997. The Gold Institute calculates that in 1998, exploration expenditure in Latin America will decline by 39% - from $241 million to $148 million - while expenditure in Australia and the South Pacific will drop from $70 million to $61 million. The most significant factor in the decline in spending was the poor gold price, although political and economic instability in some regions has not helped. However, in spite of the current declines, exploration spending by US producers in many of these countries remains higher than it was in the early 1990s. By contrast, exploration expenditure in the USA has fallen in absolute terms over the same period, and now accounts for only 25% of US producers' total budgets, compared with 51% in 1993. The survey is based on spending by 18 gold companies which account for about 81% of total US gold production. A similar report by the Metals Economics Group (MEG) reports that gold mining companies are likely to look to acquisitions rather than new projects to increase their gold production.
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1190/1998
Pretreating low-grade sulphide gold ore with heap leach bio-oxdidation
Bateman Globe, Oct 1998, p 2
Newmont Gold and Bateman have signed a confidentiality agreement that allows Bateman to market its bio-oxidation technology, which is a new tool to treat refractory low-grade gold ores. The agreement covers the patented agglomeration and bio-inoculation pretreatment applied to heap leach bio-oxidation of low-grade sulphide gold ores. Where sulphide gold ores contain carbonaceous material, resulting in the loss of gold by adsorption during cyanidation, Newmont Gold's new ammonium thiosulphate leach technology should be used after bio-oxidation. Newmont claims to be the only company in the world to successfully design, build, and operate a large commercial bio-heap leach facility for pretreatment of refractory gold ores. |
