I've noticed the Waihi Gold exploration permit near Onemana/Whangamata. A bigger company might be able to do something with the area over time, Heritage Gold had some good intercepts here.
Newmont to persist with White Bluffs quest
Ross Louthean — 22 July 2013
Newmont Waihi Gold says it plans to continue gold exploration on the epithermal gold-silver prospect it calls White Bluffs near the head of the Whangamata Harbour, north of Waihi.
The prospect was originally a discovery by Heritage Gold (now New Talisman Gold Mines) and then known as Onemana, after the small village near the harbour.
Heritage eventually dropped the prospect and one factor was a legal challenge from a group that held pine forest plantations in the area. Drilling several years ago by Heritage produced some significant gold-silver assays.
Newmont Waihi Gold, a subsidiary of Denver-based Newmont Mining Corporation - one of the world’s largest gold miners – was granted an exploration permit over White Bluffs in 2008, and has applied to extend the lease for another five years.
Meanwhile, the Waikato Times has reported that Newmont Waihi Gold’s approval to mine the correnso discovery near the Martha open cut has been challenged by anti-miners – no surprise for the company.
The newspaper said court-assisted mediation begins today and will end on Friday. Depending on the outcome, there may be a court hearing later this year.
Sources: stuff.co.nz/Waikato-times and nzresources.com data base
In late 2012, Glass Earth reported that placer mining output was lower over the three months of winter in Otago. By September, output was to move back up to planned levels. We're about in the middle of that block of time for 2013, so an update on progress down there would be useful.
There is still no WKP estimate being reported anywhere, the only positive being that US$ Gold is trending upwards, as theoretical holders ask for their physical gold from the banks in increasing numbers. But if the WKP report is ready, shareholders should be looking at it.
So far, I have not noticed any output at all from the new PR person, Anne Robert. At least CHFIR would email on a list every so often. We were to have updated web pages too. Now it looks like some of the existing photos are not of GEL's gear, that gear belongs to someone else. Why are many of the trucks and diggers emblazoned with hire centre names, when in theory Glass Earth Mining owns them? In any possible downtime, the gear that the company does own should be emblazoned with new paint and a logo stuck on them, so we know for sure.
And I repeat, when are shareholders going to be invited over for a look around the Drybread area? What's the big secret?
After enquiring about GRU#3 on behalf of shareholders, Head Office has kindly supplied a work in progress video of the latest plant being used. This GRU is composed of two sections - a trommel, and on the right is the cyclone and jigs setup in a big frame. It's quite a beast. Thanks Andrew.
Towards the end of the video the gold flakes are washed out of some riffle mat at the rear of the jig output, this lines up with a photo that was posted on the webpage. This then flows into a series pair of Knudsen bowls where it will be trapped. As the plant had been turned off to do the cleanup, somehow the Knudsen bowls would have been worked on next.
The video is dated mid June 2013. In the background are shown at least 2 bulldozers (GEL owns one) and a couple of dump trucks that don't look like the ones GEL has on their website. They seem to be from Heavy Trax Hire. Two smaller diggers are working near the GRU, they would be GEL's I think. The bigger excavator loading the wash onto the dump trucks is hired.
The loading of the dump truck with wash looked a little slap-happy, but I'm no expert! No video of the cross-pit conveyor in action.
It's for 260,000oz of gold, which at first looks disappointing when potential figures of around 3-5Moz were mentioned for the WKP area. But in the geological notes there are valid points restricting the report's scope to add in much other gold.
Diamond drilling has outlined vein mineralization that demonstrates three-dimensional continuity, thickness, and grades that can potentially be extracted economically.
The style and distribution of mineralization could be amenable to open pit mining methods, however, based on the project's location in a Department of Conservation (DoC) administered Forest Park, RPA concurs with Newmont's opinion that underground mining is the only realistic mining method to be considered. RPA therefore modelled and reported underground Mineral Resources only.
The Mineral Resources are contained within discrete vein structures within five mineralized vein domains. Given the broad spaced drilling and style of mineralization, all Mineral Resources were classified as Inferred. Although wireframe models and block grades have been interpreted to distances of 200 m, only blocks within 40 m of a drill hole were reported. There are no Mineral Reserves estimated on the Property.
There have only ever been 38 holes drilled over a large area, and so 260,000oz of gold is inferred to lie within 40 metres of some of these holes. These spots are presumably contiguous enough for someone to go underground for, but the dots between each block have not been drawn up.
Until the JV has done a lot more infill drilling, it won't get past the inferred estimate level. So a lot of money to be spent at WKP yet, before it might trigger a mining feasibility response from Newmont (3Moz?).
I have looked on www.sedar.com and there, under Glass earth public company reports, you'll see the full report on WKP dated 1 August 2013. It's down the bottom of the list of recent documents.
This is much more detailed, shows how the data was tested and then put into a modelling package(s). The grade cutoff was chosen using US$1500 an ounce, which was more current in June 2013, when most of the work was done. I don't see that as a big issue, I think gold will go back up, like it always does.
These are not Reserves, they are not ready to mine, no mining feasibility has been done, so technically they are called Resources. 'Inferred' is the lowest step on that rung, and the reason for that is the drill spacings are very wide, approx 200mtrs I think, where they are clustered. Otherwise, there's nothing except educated guesses based on the instrument surveys, for large areas of the permit.
The table below shows how blocks that could be counted in the reserves list were modelled, for just one cross-section. Heaps of these were amalgamated by the package. Note all the blocks are close to drills. The minor gold held in the fractured Rhyolite between the drill holes is not shown, because the grade is below the cutoff for underground drilling. These areas would be more interesting for pit mining, but that is not the intention.
The T-Stream intercept looks the warmest in colour, that is the highest grade area on this cross-section. Of course not all the vein predicted paths are highlighted in gold grades, because they haven't been drilled enough yet. Infill drilling is done closer to a mining event. By use of stats and noting outliers, the maximum grade of any block was pulled back to 30g/tonne ceiling. This is still a big grade, but one or two intercepts at WKP on drill logs were near 80g/tonne.
With just 38 drills so far to report on, many of them historic and above lower grade areas, it's perhaps heartening that a few more drills into the right sort of spots would allow a bigger resource to be calculated next time, perhaps double the current total. This would be the 4500mtrs of drilling proposed. At the moment the drilling programme is completing work that was meant to be done in the 2012 programme, plus a small bit more. For the last year or so, the drill cores have been prepared for assays at SGS Westport, and then sent to an SGS facility in Australia, where they can do 50 crucible sample fire assays at once. The Waihi branch of SGS must be busy doing Newmont's grade control assays. Whatever the reason, it's a bit weird we don't have the capacity to do faster assays here in NZ.
The report also makes it clear that the main reason for reporting on WKP with an NI 43-101 resource result is not to give shareholders warm fuzzies. Without such a valid resource estimate, the JV's case to extend the exploration permit with NZPAM for another 5 years would be weak, and perhaps turned down.
So Newmont and Glass Earth certainly want to do some more exploration at WKP, and they don't want the area being handed over to anyone else. They have recovered most of the original permit area, including the surroundings of Golden Cross Mine, and Komata.
A lot of Newmont's attention in NZ must be on the Correnso deposit. They have spotted a couple of smaller nearby deposits that they might be able to recover on the back of the Correnso mining. Newmont Waihi Gold is not intending to drop any staff over the intervening period, and they have modified the Correnso plans to allow cheaper drive access in light of lower gold prices.
Oceanagold has also indicated one of their mines will be mothballed in 2015, and is working on $100million of cuts to operating costs. This from NZResources.
OceanaGold staffers await outcome of NZ operations review
Simon Hartley — 5 August 2013
Wage freezes are said to be on the cards for OceanaGold Corporation (ASX, TSX & NZX: OGC) staff as the miner continues its company-wide review, which has already found more than $US100 million ($NZ126.4 M) in cost reductions.
The likelihood of a wage freeze was first mooted by OceanaGold chief executive Mick Wilkes in mid-June, with a company market update late last week saying wage freezes had been identified among the $US100 M cost reductions.
The reductions include deferment of heavy earthmoving at Reefton and Macraes, the scaling back of New Zealand exploration and unspecified cuts to the use of contractors.
In spite of nearly 1,000 staff being employed by in New Zealand across its East Otago and West Coast operations, OceanaGold had not by Friday released any staff-specific update from the review.
The company is understood to still be in negotiations with the Amalgamated Workers Union, which covers the majority of staff at Macraes in East Otago.
The latest corporate presentation outlined that estimates of 2013 production and earlier cost guidances were on track.
OceanaGold's Didipio gold and copper mine in the northern Philippines is estimated to produce between 50,000-70,000 oz of gold and 15,000-18,000 tonnes of contained copper, with copper sales offsetting the cost to produce gold to a negative $US370-$US50/oz for the year.
Overall New Zealand operations for the year estimate production of between 235,000-255,000 oz of gold, at a production cash cost of $US650 to $US800/oz.
While the Macraes site has a mine life to 2020 at present, OceanaGold announced its Globe-Progress open cut operations was being cut short by two years and would be mothballed by mid-2015.
Globally gold producers are cutting staff levels, some are virtually halting exploration and the large number of Australian gold exploration juniors are downsizing on all levels with some invoking wage cuts that also take in some chief executives and senior management.
Glass Earth was granted an exploration permit yesterday: EP 54492, Neavesville North, 974 Ha. They were granted a smaller area than they asked for in the application.
On the same day three permits were let go:
53184, 53142, 53298 (Gore, Piano Flat, Moeraki Extension).
GEL now has less than 3000km2 of permits, two thirds of it being the single large Kakanui prospecting permit up above Macraes.
serious question ez. are you not afraid GEL is about to hit penny dreadful status and that many, many years of capital raising and massive dilution are ahead on the back of a flailing gold price?
As Balance has pointed out earlier, there has already been a lot of dilution in this share. I keep a running total of MCap and shareprice on a spreadsheet, and right now the share is probably at its lowest MCap since the IPO.
There was quite a reasonable participation in a PP at the start of 2013, (over $3 mill cash) but with the higher wages, overheads and running costs staying well ahead of any placer income in Q1, the full Q2 report that must come out by the end of this month, will be compulsory reading for anyone investing, or intending to invest, in this share. There has been no press release from the company about Drybread operations lately, nor has the website been updated. Despite the company paying for the services of an IR person in Canada. We've had winter, tough months to be working outside, and so I'm apprehensive about the results.
The new WKP report does shed some light on the potential of the area, but also the ongoing exploration costs. It's a long-term game for big players, but GEL at least has a good percentage of the JV, and only 35% of the costs there.
If Newmont suddenly decided that anything in GEL's possession was a smart long-term investment, the company looks like a bargain on paper at the moment. The sum total of investor money put in from the IPO onwards (not including the setup before that), which I think is less than C$30mill, is just nothing in the scale of larger miners. But as I say, anyone interested in the share, needs some more official information at this point.
I'm still wondering what the full picture is like at Drybread, but I suspect it's not pretty. On googling 42A Russell Street Alexandra (GEL's office and workshop) yesterday, this ad block appeared on the front page. Space for lease.
One of the photos inside the office block shows a drilling rig.
This news can be added to a terse comment on finances on page 25 of the GEL Q1 report (end of May), a copy being held on the Glass Earth website.
Liquidity and Capital Resources As a mining exploration company with currently modest revenues, the Company’s operations are dependent on its ability to raise financing and its ability to realize assets and discharge liabilities.
The Company’s cash position as at March 31, 2013 was $1,192,000 (March 31 2012: $2,369,000) with Trade Payables of $497,000. Expected alluvial losses since 31 March will further reduce the Company’s cash position.
The Company has reduced its staff by 50% with the two senior executives also taking significant salary sacrifices. The Company has reduced its non-exploration expenditures and efforts to reduce other liabilities are underway. Management and Directors are pursuing several alternatives to ensure funding is available to continue its drilling campaigns. The Company has a history of successive capital raisings (as is usual for an exploration company).
The Company’s existing share, option and warrant capital structure is set out at the end of this report under the heading of "Supplemental to the Financial Statements".
A little bit of Sunday analysis on the fortunes of a NZ junior gold explorer. From the date of the IPO in 2006, the MCap exceeded the cash paid in for a year or so, and then the price crashed as shares were swapped for debt over on the TSX. The company bravely recovered, consolidated the shares in 2010, and had a brief period where again the MCap exceeded the cash paid in (helped in this by Brent Cook). This graph would have been a useful indicator to sell, based on the ongoing funds being raised shown as red cumulative totals (might be a bit inaccurate). On average, funds are required about once a year.
The Q2 report could be used to pinpoint when the next fundraising is needed.
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Originally Posted by moosie_900
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