US markets trend downward, Dec. 10-14

The gold price fell 0.7% to close the trading week at US$1,238.10. The Philadelphia Gold and Silver Index fell 0.5% to 67.59 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.18% to 24,100.51. The S&P 500 Index fell 1.2% to 2,599.95.

Shares of Iamgold rose 2.7% to US$3.38, after the company announced a maiden resource for its Gossey satellite gold deposit, 15 km northwest of its Essakane gold mine in Burkina Faso. The project has 10.5 million indicated tonnes grading 0.87 gram gold per tonne for 291,000 oz. gold and 2.9 million inferred tonnes at 0.91 gram gold for 85,000 oz. gold. The company based its resource on more than 94,000 metres drilled across 733 holes. The company constrained the resource using an open-pit optimization algorithm that assumed a long-term, US$1,500 per oz. gold price.

Essakane is a 90 to 10 joint venture between Iamgold and the Burkina Faso government. In 2018’s third quarter, the mine produced 96,000 oz. gold attributable to Iamgold at US$993 per oz. gold all-in sustaining costs. In the first three quarters of 2018, it produced 302,000 oz. gold attributable to Iamgold, up from 287,000 oz. gold over the same period the year before.

Shares of Alamos Gold fell 17.5% to US$2.97 on news of an accident at its Mulatos gold mine in Mexico that may have killed two  employees. The men were buried during an “unexpected pit slope movement” during pre-stripping in the mine’s El Salto area. The company says they are missing and presumed dead.

The company is slowing development at its Kirazli gold project in Turkey, where it has finished road construction but is waiting for the Turkish government to issue several permits, including an operating licence. The Turkish Department of Energy and Natural Resources has told Alamos that its operating licence review follows the normal bureaucratic process. Alamos hopes to receive the licence by early 2019. It will then begin major construction and earthworks at the project. It hopes to begin production at Kirazli in the second half of 2020.

Shares of Rio Tinto rose US71¢ to US$46.68. The company recently sold its aluminum smelter in Dunkerque, France, to Liberty House, part of the GFG Alliance, for US$500 million.