Amantaytau turns first profit for Oxus (July 28, 2004)

London-based Oxus Gold (OXS-L) will stamp its first dividend cheque from the Amantaytau gold mine in Uzbekistan, which poured its first gold in December of last year.

Amantaytau, in which Oxus owns a 50% interest and Uzbek state agency Navoi Mining and Metallurgical Combinat holds 50%, produced 59,689 oz. gold in the six months ended June 30. The plant processed 384,000 tonnes of ore at an average head grade of 5.5 grams gold per tonne. Recovery in Amantaytau’s leach plant averaged 87.8% over the period.

Currently Amantaytau, about 250 km northwest of Samarkand and about 30 km southeast of Newmont Mining’s (NEM-N) Zeravshan heap-leach project, is exploiting a surface oxide resource mined from an open pit. Several satellite pits are scheduled to come into production in 2005. The proven and probable reserve in the Phase I pit is 4.3 million tonnes of oxide material at grades of 5 grams gold and 10.3 grams silver per tonne, with additional reserves of 4 million tonnes averaging 1.2 grams gold and 68.4 grams silver per tonne.

Increasing mill throughput has put a strain on the mill, depressing recoveries in the second quarter of the year. Two more leach tanks are being added to the existing four-tank circuit to increase the ore’s residence time in the cyanide solution, and ore will be ground to a finer grain size.

Feasibility studies are under way on potential underground reserves at Amantaytau Centraly (Central) and Amantaytau Severny (North), where a further 5.5 million tonnes of sulphide material grading 11.5 grams per tonne has been blocked out. The underground mine would produce about 200,000 oz. per year, possibly from early 2006.

Oxus is also completing feasibility work on the economics of running a heap-leach operation at Vysokovoltnoye, to produce about 52,000 oz. gold annually starting early next year.