Charlotte Mathews
11 June 2009
Johannesburg — GLOBAL gold miner AngloGold Ashanti has entered into a strategic alliance with a Dubai company to find and develop mines in the Middle East and north Africa, it said yesterday.
The company with which it has formed a 50:50 joint venture, Thani Dubai Mining, is already exploring concessions in Yemen and Egypt and is at the prefeasibility study stage on the Medden concession in Yemen, where a reserve of 234000oz of gold has been defined by SRK Consulting. The resource on the project, which has less certainty of being mined economically, is almost a million ounces.
But this is a small deposit by AngloGold Ashanti's standards, as it produces almost 5-million ounces of gold a year.
The alliance would be led by a board with equal representation from both parties. Project acquisitions and exploration would be funded equally up to completion of a prefeasibility study. If mining went ahead, AngloGold would build and operate the mine.
AngloGold spokesman Alan Fine said the alliance entitled AngloGold to participate in Thani Dubai's Medden concession and this would be considered "on its merits". AngloGold did not have a minimum size of resource that it would consider, as it depended on other factors such as the deposits' proximity to other deposits. Although the alliance would explore for gold, and gold remained AngloGold's primary focus, it would not rule out other economically viable byproducts.
Although north Africa and the Middle East were not major gold producing areas, AngloGold saw potential there, Fine said.
AngloGold also announced yesterday that after a series of seismic events at its Savuka mine last month, damage to one of the three shafts had been detected which would require repair and would affect production from the mine during the current quarter.
One worker was killed in the accident, when six earthquakes were recorded within 10 minutes, the biggest of which measured 2,9 on the Richter scale. All 700 workers underground had to be evacuated through the nearby Tau Tona mine.
AngloGold said it would give more details on the extent of production losses from the mine, as well as other losses related to safety stoppages, after the end of the current quarter.
Savuka produced 66000oz of gold last year, more than 1% of group production.
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