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Team tasked to find new deep-level mining methods - Ian Cockerill, CEO Gold Fields In an interview on Radio 2000 @ 18:45 on 7 September 2006 [miningmx.com] -- GOLD FIELDS CEO Ian Cockerill has tasked people within the world number four gold producer to find new ways to mine at deep levels to fully exploit the Wits Basin in South Africa. Gold Fields will spend R4.7bn over the next decade deepening its Driefontein and Kloof mines to access nearly 11m oz of gold and extend the life of operations in South Africa to 2035. These are replacement ounces. The mines will be the deepest in the world at more than four kilometres (2.5 miles) deep. "There is more gold. We know there is. This doesn't take us to the bottom of our lease areas, but it takes us to what we believe is a realistic level at the moment," Cockerill said on the business radio show broadcast on Radio 2000. "We've tasked some of our people to look look at different mining paradigms. How can you mine at much greater depth? It might be an entirely different way of mining than we know today," he said. A study commissioned by the Chamber of Mines a few years ago determined that there were no reasons why companies could not mine five kilometres (three miles) below surface. The Wits Basin still has an immense resource of gold, Cockerill said. He has in the past said there are an estimated 600m oz of gold left in the Wits Basin. "You can't afford not to look at Wits. It does mean going a lot deeper and we'll need to think of completely different ways of exploiting it," he said. Cockerill told Classic Business Day the capital programme would be funded over 10 years, with the cash generated from the mines being sufficient to pay for the depth extension.
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