Gold miner Kinross’ Q4 results included a $3.2 billion impairment charge attributable largely to the Tasiast gold deposit in Mauritania.
The Tasiast news adds to a $2.49 billion charge last year on the very same assets. Since 2011, when Kinross acquired Red Back Mining (which includes Tasiast and another West African mine, Chirano) the Toronto-based miner has slashed almost 80% of the takeover value.
Despite the precipitous decline, CEO Paul Rollinson is confident in Tasiast’s long term potential: “we continue to believe that Tasiast remains an important part of [our] future, based on our work to date on our feasibility study and on our exploration activity, (and) we continue to be impressed by the upside at Tasiast outside of the footprint of the current resource.”