News

January 05, 2009

Awakening A Giant: Marengo Mining Plugs Away At Yandera In Papua New Guinea

By Alastair Ford

“We’re quietly confident that there’s a world out there that still needs metals”. So says Les Emery, managing director of Marengo Mining. Let’s hope he’s right, for his sake as well as ours, because at the Yandera copper-molybdenum project in Papua New Guinea Marengo has a whole lot of metal that it will be looking to start selling within the next three years. Specifically, 3.4 million tonnes of contained copper. Or perhaps we should say 3.4 million tonnes and counting, as drilling is by no means over. No wonder a recent presentation given by Les Emery was entitled “Awakening a Giant”. As things stand, at the end of the 2008 season, and using a 0.2% cut-off, and combining copper and molybdenum, Marengo was able confidently to inform the market that Yandera holds 527 million tonnes of ore grading 0.38% copper equivalent in the indicated category, and a further 766 million tonnes of ore grading 0.33% in the inferred category. There are also significant gold, silver and rhenium by-products not included in the copper equivalents. What’s more, Les Emery isn’t even convinced that at Yandera the company has been working up the best of the prospects on its sizeable project portfolio. But you’ve got to start somewhere.

That Yandera will definitely go into production is not cut and dried yet, of course, especially at these metals prices, but things are progressing apace, and a definitive feasibility study (DFS) is scheduled for completion by December 2009. Les Emery reels off a list of issues that are currently under investigation, ranging from pit design through to infrastructure, and fine-tuning of the economics. The plan is for a 25 million tonnes per year operation, with an initial life of ten years....