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Gold/Mining/Energy : Golden Eagle Int. (MYNG) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: WCF who wrote (12228)	8/12/1998 2:57:00 PM
From: gregor	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 34075

Big names are not putting millions into placer deposits----read on....... Barrick gold says ''no'' to $202 mln Peru deposit HEADLINES Wednesday, August 12, 09:37 am, EST LIMA (Reuters) - Canada's Barrick Gold , North America's second largest gold producer, said Tuesday it will not use a $202 million buy option on a Peruvian deposit in a fresh blow to the government's privatisation programme. Instead, Barrick said it will focus its activities in Peru on other deposits, and especially on its $260 million mine development at Pierina, which should come on-line in December and produce 750,000 ounces in the first year. ''We have just advised the government we will not be taking the Quicay project further,'' Vince Borg, vice president of communications, told Reuters by telephone from the firm's base in Toronto. Barrick won the rights to Quicay by agreeing at an auction two years ago that it would pay $202 million if - after exploration - it wanted to go ahead with the project. But the firm's $3 million exploration investment in the central Andes did not reveal the ''sizable'' deposit that would have justified the price tag, Borg said, adding the deadline for the go-ahead decision had been August 14. With Barrick now concentrating on Pierina, which has over seven million ounces in proven and probable reserves, the Canadian firm is set next year to become the second biggest gold producer in Peru, according to analysts. Denver's Newmont and leading locally-owned Buenaventura run Latin America's largest gold mine, Yanacocha, in northern Peru. Barrick bought Pierina - about 13,000 feet (4,000 metres) above sea level in the Andes - and several other deposits still included in its exploration portfolio when it acquired a small Vancouver-listed firm Arequipa Resources in 1996. A government source downplayed the impact of Barrick's pull-out from Quicay, saying the deposit was now more attractive than two years ago as its reserves had tripled to three million ounces during the Canadian firm's exploration. But Barrick's withdrawal was the latest in a disappointing series this year of announcements on major projects that have scuppered government calculations of the investment inflows it badly needs to finance Peru's yawning external accounts. Depressed copper prices have forced South African-controlled conglomerate Minorco and Canada's Cambior to delay feasibility studies on two projects in Peru involving a total potential investment of $1.8 billion. And last month, Royal Dutch/Shell and Mobil also pulled out of a $3 billion natural gas investment that was set to provide the government with $6 billion in tax revenue in the first 30 years and make Peru a net hydrocarbon exporter. Coming as Peru's trade gap - hit by low commodity prices and weak Asian demand - widens, the problems in these projects undermine the government's argument that long-term investment projects in the mining and oil sectors will finance the gap. Investors are increasingly worried the $65 billion Andean economy's trade gap will be at least $2.45 billion this year, up from $1.85 billion in 1997, according