| |
Harmony weighs large surface project
Allan Seccombe
Posted: Mon, 28 Jan 2008
[miningmx.com] -- HARMONY is weighing the treatment of 240 million tonnes of tailings through its mothballed St Helena plant to extract gold and possibly uranium, CEO Graham Briggs said on Monday.
There are nine tailings dumps in the Welkom area of the Free State province.
Harmony is undergoing a re-structuring to restore it to profitability after years of losses.
A surface treatment project would also be a welcome alternative to deep-level mining, which has been halted across all mines in South Africa since Friday when state power utility declared force majeure because it could no longer provide enough electricity.
Under Briggs, who took over as CEO in an acting capacity in August after the surprise resignation of Bernard Swanepoel, Harmony is adopting a back-to-basics approach, as well as reviewing its ownership of marginal mines.
Harmony has put its uranium assets into a new company in which it holds a 40% stake. Pamodzi Resources Fund owns the remaining 60%. The intention is to list the company, which requires investment of R2.4bn to bring it into production of 2.2 million pounds of uranium a year.
In the latest scheme to bring low-cost production to the company, Harmony will put tailings onto three dumps, which it can better
control from an environmental point of view. There is also uranium potential that it is deciding on.
“Three significant benefits that will flow from the proposed project include addressing environmental concerns related to the existing nine tailings dams; consolidating tailings using current best practice and significantly reducing current environmental impacts; and the economic benefit of gold recovery,” Briggs said in a statement.
Briggs was not immediately available for comment or to give further details.
A decision to pull the trigger on the project depends on regulatory processes underway at the potential project, including an environmental impact assessment. The project could start at the end of 2008. The costs of the project are yet to be estimated.
Harmony already has the Phoenix 50,000 tonne surface treatment project.
| |
0% 
