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AngloGold board to weigh R9bn Mponeng extension
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Thu, 22 May 2008
[miningmx.com] -- ANGLOGOLD Ashanti's board will consider in October a project to deepen the flagship Mponeng gold mine in South Africa and extend the life of the mine to beyond 2040, officials said.
The current life of mine runs to 2017 and a project is underway to deepen the mine to further exploit the Ventersdorp Contact Reef (VCR), pushing the life out by another nine years via declines.
"In September we will go beyond the deepest point in the world," said Johan Viljoen, vice-president of AngloGold Southern Africa. The mine will go through 3,770 metres.
The other project, which is thought to cost R9bn, would push the mine down to between 4,300 and 4,600 metres.
The production profile is 600,000 oz/year. The plan is to keep production above 500,000 oz/year at the mine.
This is not bad for a mine, which AngloGold at one point considered selling to
Harmony because of poor production levels and operational difficulties. The turnaround of the mine is largely attributed to the efforts of then-general manager Viljoen.
The project is designed to maintain feed at the nearby gold plant steady at 160,000 tonnes a month. Mponeng has been exceeding feed to the plant and there is a 40,000 tonne stockpile there, said Randel Rademann, general manager of Mponeng.
Both Viljoen and Rademann both sounded a confident note that the Carbon Leader Reef project would win board approval.
The project will entail the construction of three vertical tertiary shafts to access the CLR, which is mined by nearby Tautona, which has given the Mponeng team a good idea of what to expect from the reef.
"It's a very uniform orebody," Rademann said.
One of the key issues management has to consider in advancing the project is the safety of its workers, who will be dealing with rocks at a temperature of 70 degrees Celsius,
and in an area where seismicity is an issue, particularly at depth.
The likely option is that the work will be as mechanised as possible, keeping as large a gap between workers and danger as possible.
Rademann said while mechanisation would lift production, but it is a lot more expensive than conventional mining. "Mechanisation is a safety decision, not a rand per square metre decision," he said.
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