20 March 2008
Botswana diamond-miner Debswana, which is a joint venture between leading producer De Beers and the country's government, is conducting studies that could see it expanding its Jwaneng mine underground, or expanding the open pit even further, in a project called 'cut nine', it said on Monday.
Studies to either go underground or develop the cut nine were still in prefeasibility stages, and Jwaneng GM Balisi Bongyongo declined to provide estimates of what these projects could cost.
The company said previously that it planned to sink an exploratory shaft to at least 1,000 m, as part of the study to mine underground.
Meanwhile management was already doing a feasibility study on cut eight, which would take the pit deeper than the current 350 m, at a cost of some P2.1-billion, or nearly R2.5-billion.
Current stripping ratios at the mine were 4:1, and cut eight would raise this to nearly 12:1, with cut nine pushing this up to 18:1 or 19:1, should Debswana decide to go ahead with it. Cut eight is scheduled to begin in 2011 and portions of the existing processing plant, if not the entire plant, will have to be removed to make way for it. Jwaneng is the richest diamond mine in the world by value, and contributes between 60 to 70 percent of Debswana's revenue, although the company's Orapa mine, located some 700 km north is the bigger volume producer.
Debswana produces 25 percent of the world's diamond production by value from Jwaneng, Orapa, Letlhakane and Damtshaa.In a recent interview the Business Week, De Beers managing director Gareth Penny said that there was massive potential for De Beers in Botswana and the challenge would be to discover new opportunities to replace the diminishing mines.
He was responding to a question on whether his company has put in place any back up or hedge plan when the Botswana mines exhaust their life span since Debswana is the largest contributor to the group and remains the group's major producer. In the De Beers results that were published earlier this month, Debswana contributed 33,6 million carats out of a total of 51,1 million carats produced by De Beers.
"In any mining activities you obviously have your proven reserves but there are tremendous amount of reserves here in Botswana.
Debswana's Jwaneng mine is set to go underground by year 2022 and mining pundits expect the lifespan to be extended by another 20 to 30 years."Both Orapa and Jwaneng mines have very significant lives ahead of them. "Yes they will go underground in less than 20 years, but after that I believe they can go on for about 50 or 60 more years.
De Beers mine in Kimberley has been going 100 years. "But more importantly going ahead our challenge will be to look for more mines and as you know we already have the likes of AK06 which is still in the process of being built." Although it is not as big as Orapa or Jwaneng it is still a significant mine, producing about 800,000 carats and it adds to our production. De Beers is currently spending over US$100 million a year in exploration and finding new deposits and has invested a lot of time and effort in countries such as Angola, DRC and South Africa.
(additional reporting by Mining Weekly)
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