Vancouver — The dormant heap-leach pads at
The open-pit mine operated from 1987 until 1998, during which time 1.1 million oz. gold were produced from two deposits. Small amounts of gold are still recovered as a result of re-circulating the heap-leach pad solutions.
The heaps still contain about 600,000 oz. gold in 64 million tonnes of material, albeit at low grades of about 0.27 gram per tonne. The task is to find a way of liberating this gold from the processed ore at a low cost.
Enter Pintail Environmental, which has been developing microbial leaching technologies over the past 17 years. The technologies use bacteria to enhance and accelerate gold recovery by solution leaching.
Vista Gold and Pintail will evaluate the process over the next year with the intention of entering into a joint venture whereby the latter will earn a half-interest in a commercial operation producing gold from the heaps. Pintail must demonstrate economic gold recovery and will pay the US$500,000 cost of the test phase.
Hycroft has a measured and indicated hardrock resource of 38 million tonnes grading 0.67 gram gold per tonne.
Colorado-based Vista Gold has 11 advanced-stage and past-producing gold projects in Nevada, California, Idaho, Mexico and Bolivia.
The company has 15.5 million shares outstanding.
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