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Nevill Nicolau, COO, AngloGold Ashanti
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Wed, 08 Feb 2006
[miningmx.com] -- MININGMX spoke to Nevill Nicolau, chief operating officer at AngloGold Ashanti, about the company's prospects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
MININGMX: Nevill, how many projects does AngloGold Ashanti have in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)?
NICOLAU: We have one greenfield exploration site in the DRC, and quite a lot of prospecting licenses covering an area about 3,000km². But essentially we have one exploration site at the moment.
MININGMX: Why is this area so important to AngloGold?
NICOLAU: Well, it’s potentially one of the last remaining real gold geologies left in the world. It’s an area that historically has produced a lot of gold. It’s right in the centre of the greenstone geology of Africa. If you just look at the informal mining activity which occurs in this area, and the historic mining
that occured in this area, it’s very, very prospective.
MININGMX: What exactly are you guys doing there? Are you exploring at the moment?
NICOLAU: We are drilling at the moment with the view of expanding on the resources that we have already defined of about 1.2 million ounces. We are looking to expand that resource to 9 million ounces.
MININGMX: By when?
NEVILL NICOLAU: Well geologists will never give you a real timeframe, but I mean we are talking the next year or two to refine the resources.
MININGMX: When do you think we might see production out of the DRC?
NICOLAU: Realistically, it takes about two or three years to find the reserve and do the feasibility study. So maybe we'd start production in five or six years time. But I mean, it’s a very general scale.
MININGMX: What kind of spend is AngloGold looking at in the DRC on
exploration?
NICOLAU: I don’t have that number with me, but it’s several million US a year.
MININGMX: Do you regard this as AngloGold’s most prospective area?
NICOLAU: Well, we range Colombia and the DRC as the areas where we are going to focus our exploration efforts in the immediate term. What we have done in the last year is focus our activities. And the Colombian and the DRC are our two key green field exploration areas at the moment. We keep tabs on other things but we focus our money and effort on those areas.
MININGMX: How difficult is it operating in the DRC?
NICOLAU: It’s a country that is trying to bring itself together. From time to time there are shooting incidences; there are skirmishes between opposition forces in the area. It’s not an easy place to operate in, but we take the view that it’s a country that is trying to get itself together.
In time, it will become more
politically stable and more easy to mine, and we want to be part of that in terms of political stability, bringing economic stability and helping through economic stability, to develop the region.
MININGMX: Are the mining laws suited to the ways AngloGold operates?
NICOLAU: We got into trouble in the press, I think unfairly, for bribes. When you listen to the full story, they weren’t bribes as such.
But we operate there according to our company values which are honesty and integrity. We don’t pay bribes, we don’t bug the system, we work according to the rules. And we have been able to do that up until now.
From time to time, we withdraw our people from camps because we feel that there is a real and imminent threat for their health and safety. Then we move back into the camp and we carry on mining. So we watch the situation.
MININGMX: And the mining laws, do you think that they are
adequate?
NICOLAU: I’m not aware of any particular problems we have with the mining law; I mean we operate within the law.
At the moment, we don’t see any real issue. We have a prospecting license. We don’t think it will be impossible to get a mining license. Nothing that I would be aware of that would be a fatal flaw.
MININGMX: Great. Thank you very much.
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