South Africa police standoff with illegal gold miners escalates
The police sealed off access to the Buffelsfontein gold mine in Stilfontein several weeks ago to deny the miners access to food and other essentials.
US Gold Corp. (Nasdaq: USAU) cleared a major hurdle in the development of its CK gold project on Monday after securing approval from the Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ) for its air quality permit.
The air quality permit represents the last of the three conditions associated with the mine operating permit issued to the company earlier this year. The other two conditions were the project’s reclamation bond and the Wyoming Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit, both of which were already satisfied.
US Gold’s executive chairman Luke Norman stated that the fulfillment of this remaining condition “positions the CK gold project to be Wyoming’s next producing mine, adding gold and copper production to the state’s resource portfolio.”
With this final permitting hurdle cleared, the company is now working on on an optimized prefeasibility study, which it says could be released as soon as the end of this year. This prefeasibility work was previously initiated in 2022 but was suspended a year later to fit the project’s permitting timeframe, as well as due to market conditions (i.e. Covid disruptions) and changes to the project following a review by the WDEQ.
The new study would build on an existing 2021 PFS that outlined a 10-year operation averaging 108,500 oz. of gold-equivalent output per year, including 135,300 oz. over the first three years. Total metal production over life of mine will be 248.8 million lb. of copper and 1.02 million oz. of gold.
The study gave the CK project an after-tax net present value (discounted at 5%) of $266 million and internal rate of return of 33.7%. Initial capital is estimated at $221 million, giving it a payback period of two years.
This PFS was completed after US Gold pivoted to developing the CK project after spending years exploring prospective assets within the states of Nevada and Idaho, namely the Keystone and Challis gold projects.
Acquired from Energy Fuels in 2014, the CK project is home to a large-tonnage, gold-copper deposit that has 1.58 million oz. of gold equivalent (1.11 million oz. gold and 280 million lb. copper) in measured and indicated resources.
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