Guatemala’s Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources has approved the environmental impact assessment (EIA) for Aurogin Resources‘ (AUQ-V) El Sastre Gold project, 30 km northeast of Guatemala city.
Construction of the “zero discharge” facility is slated to begin this fall, with production to follow in the spring of 2006.
“This is great news for Aurogin,” said Aurogin CEO John Paterson in a prepared statement. “It removes any uncertainty about timing of the project development and clears the way to enter into a financing arrangement.”
Aurogin is currently in talks with several parties aimed at arranging a combination of debt and equity financing for the project.
At last count, indicated resources at El Sastre totalled 370,000 tonnes running 4.1 grams gold per tonne, for 49,251 contained ounces. Another 1.2 million tonnes of inferred material averages 3.1 grams gold, for 117,265 contained ounces. The estimates employ a cutoff grade of 1 gram gold.
Column, bottle-roll and percolation tests indicate gold recoveries exceeding 92%. The column test was run on un-agglomerated, minus-2-inch material and gave a recovery of 97% in 15 days.
The near-surface resource is contained in a 300-metre-by-500-metre area, and is based on assays results from 38 percussion drill holes, 8 reverse-circulation drill holes, and more than 1,000 trench, pit, channel and chip samples.
Production from the open-pit, heap-leach operation is expected to ramp up from an initial 20,000 oz. per year to 40,000 oz. annually as more resources are defined. 4
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