Chile to triple gold production by 2015

Chile is looking to become a much more significant gold producer in the years ahead with a report suggesting that output could triple by 2015 - but the capital cost of large low grade projects remains a problem.

SANTIAGO - 

According to research undertaken by the state organisation, the Chilean Copper Commission (Cochilco), the country's gold production could triple by 2015, putting the South American nation possibly into the world's top seven global producers.

Chile's current gold production is put at 39.2 tonnes, but new developments and expansions - most notably Barrick's Pascua Lama project - could bring output to 103 tonnes by 2015.  Indeed this could even be an underestimation with a number of other potential projects waiting in the wings.

Much of Chile's current production is byproduct output from the country's huge copper mining industry, the world's largest, but more recent discoveries of potential gold/copper orebodies high in the Andes, which have been made viable by the big recent increase in the gold price, could mean that the country's output increases substantially in the years ahead.  However the big problem at the moment is the shortage of capital for major gold developments of this type which require billions of dollars to get them on stream.

Typical of these potential projects is Barrick and Kinross's Cerro Casale project in the Maricunga region where the resource is put at 23 million ounces of gold and 6 million pounds of copper but the capital cost of developing the mine is put at $3.65 billion.  Kinross already has its Maricunga deposit (formerly Refugio), in production nearby and between the two is Exeter Resource's Caspiche exploration project which has defined a resource containing 19.6 million ounces of gold and 4.84 billion pounds of copper.  This would again be a multi billion dollar project, but Exeter is looking at a lower cost option involving the exploitation of a higher grade core section.  Also in the region is Andina's Volcan project with a latest indicated resource estimate of 9.8 million ounces of contained gold and inferred resources of 768,000 ounces of contained gold at a cut-off grade of approximately 0.3 g/t Au. Andina reckons project development would not be complex and is expected to have comparatively low development costs based on: metallurgical testing to date, location in Chile, access to infrastructure and proximity to surface of deposit.

This is a particularly interesting region of Chile for potential high tonnage,low grade, gold projects, mostly with copper as a byproduct.  Minera IRL, is the latest company to have announced major potential in the area in acquiring an interest in Catalina resources' La Falda project, a porphyry intrusive with gold-bearing banded quartz veins. The banded quartz veins carry highly anomalous gold values. These veins are identical to those which host resources in the other large gold-porphyry deposits of the Maricunga belt in Chile. The main exploration target at La Falda is thus a multi-million ounce near-surface gold-porphyry with associated epithermal gold-silver mineralisation.  A director of Minera IRL told Mineweb that this is a Caspiche look-alike project.

But all these projects are high in the Andes - mostly above 4,000 metres altitude, which imposes particular demands on personnel and equipment.

Even so, the latest strength in the gold price makes it more and more possible that all these projects may go ahead within the next decade.  Given that global gold production has been on the decline and there is a relative lack of major new gold projects worldwide, the Maricunga region ones are attracting ever increasing attention.

Chilean newspaper El Mercurio reports Juan Cristobal City, Cochilco markets coordinator, as saying that overall, the development of the projects relates to the companies' long term views on the future of the gold price, but "existing hikes, together with the prospects for coming years-create conditions more conducive to put them into place, because it would allow companies to benefit from at least strong cash flows in the first years of operation. "

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