IAMGOLD eyes Gogama open-pit mine.

A Toronto mine developer announced it is one step closer to carving out an openpit gold mine near Gogama in northeastern Ontario.

IAMGOLD Corporation liked what it read in a conceptual preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for its Cote Gold Project and has already moved to the prefeasibility stage.

The company is crunching the numbers on the viability of digging a pit and building a processing mill at a site five kilometres west of Highway 144.

With upfront capital costs of $1.03 billion and life-of-mine sustaining capital costs estimated at $440 million, the project is pegged to produce an average of 302,000 ounces of gold every year over a 21-year lifespan. The average grade would be 0.97 grams per tonne.

The PEA study outlines a conventional truck and shovel open pit mining operation with a crushing operation, ball milling, gravity concentration and cyanide leaching, followed by gold recovery using carbon-in-pulp, stripping and electrowinning.

A thickened tailings management facility is being considered and the mine site would be powered by a 44-kilometre power line to Hydro One's Shining Tree substation.

The company said the prefeasibility study should be completed by the second quarter of this year.

The prefeasibility study is designed to validate and provide more detail of the development concept set out in the PEA. That means more exploration drilling, engineering and environmental work.

Exploration activities will continue at its more than 500-square-kilometre property surrounding the deposit.

"The Cote Gold Project provides us with an exceptional option for future growth," said Steve Letwin, IAMGOLD presidentCEO, in a Jan. 26 statement. "Since acquiring Cote several years ago we have been focused on de-risking the project. Our drilling program, since IAMGOLD took over the project, has led to a ninefold increase in the indicated resource to eight million ounces with another one million ounce inferred resource. The positive results of the PEA demonstrate the potential for Cote Gold to be a low-cost, 21-year mine with attractive returns."

The project is located in Chester and Neville...

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