Centerra Gold (CG-T) has officially registered its Gatsuurt ore reserves with Mongolia’s National Registry of Mineral Reserves, a move the company says will bring it one step closer to negotiating an investment agreement.
The announcement today follows news late last month that the Mongolian government had started to review the project’s reserves and feasibility study.
Gatsuurt has an open-pittable indicated resource of 18.6 million tonnes grading 3.1 grams gold for 1.8 million oz. of gold. It has been drilled to a depth of 200 metres.
The Gatsuurt deposit consists of disseminated and vein-style gold mineralization in volcanic, granite, and meta-sedimentary rocks in two geographically separate central and main zones.
Quartz veins with visible gold were first discovered at Gatsuurt in 1997 in the placer bedrock floor and boulders of altered granite. Disseminated arsenopyrite and pyrite were also noted in the placer debris.
Centerra plans to truck ore from Gatsuurt 35 km to its producing Boroo mine. The company will build a bio-oxidation circuit at Boroo for Gatsuurt’s oxide and refractory ore.
In a technical report filed in May 2006, Centerra said it planned to operate the Gatsuurt mine at a rate of 35,000 tonnes per day (ore plus waste), which will release sufficient ore to supply the Boroo mill at a rate of 4,800 tonnesper day.
The Boroo open-pit gold mine, which has been operating since March 2004, is 110 km northwest of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia’s capital.
While relatively remote, a paved, all-weather highway linking Ulaanbaatar and the Russian city of Irkutsk passes within three kms of the Boroo mine site.
The main Trans-Mongolian railway, which connects Ulaanbaatar with Irkutsk and Beijing, runs through the city of Baruunkharaa, about 20 km to the north of Boroo.
Centerra’s shares finished the day up 24 to $12.34 on 60,175 shares traded.
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