Despite some delays and setbacks, St. George Metals (VSE) recently poured its initial dore from pilot plant facilities at the Dean mine in the Battle Mountain district of Nevada.
The Houston-based company began producing dore (gold-silver) in mid-August, with initial production from processing high grade concentrate through a cyanide leaching circuit, a Merrill Crow facility and refinery. The original program called for pilot plant dore production to begin in early July. However due to crushing facility delays, the company arranged to concentrate some 2,000 tons through another company’s facilities in nearby Kingston.
By using this concentrate as an interim alternative to in-plant crushing, St. George expects to meet its year-end processing target of the permitted 20,000 tons. The delayed facilities are expected to be operational shortly, and permitting is being arranged so as to move into permanent production early next year.
St. George Chairman Neal Wade said that bringing the pilot facilities on stream has been “a trying experience” for a small company. But he noted that with processing facilities in place and grades exceeding initial estimates, the company is making progress towards its commercial production goal. Underground production from the Pittsburg and Morning Star veins delivered to the plant site through the end of June averaged about 0.84 oz. gold per ton, well above earlier estimates. St. George also reported that production from level 4 of the Pittsburg vein averaged about 1.2 oz. gold, compared with an earlier estimate of 0.9 oz. gold per ton.
St. George intends to start developing the D-21 area where exploratory drilling identified a new target and returned two 5-ft. intercepts grading 3.1 oz. gold and 7.8 oz. gold respectively.
Ralph Roberts, a member of the company’s exploration committee, said the D-21 area is important because exploratory work has shown that ore shoots in the vein on levels 4 and 6 plunge southwestward and continue down to the D-21 level. “The D-21 discovery may thus lead to the development
of several new mineralized zones,” Roberts added.
The new portal entrance will be located east of existing portals, and less than a mile from the county road. Development is expected to take five months after permitting, and cost about US$700,000.
Financing for D-21 area development (and for pilot plant construction) is allocated from 1991 sales of units, and from pilot production.
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