PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed PanTerra Gold has warned that operating costs at its Las Lagunas gold tailings retreatment project, in the Dominican Republic, would increase by some $200 000 a month for up to the next six months.
The announcement comes after the company received advice from its contracted power supplier AES Andres DR that an event of force majeure had occurred, which could affect the power costs for the project for a period of up to six months.
A lightning strike at AES’s power plant damaged a steam turbine, reducing the plant’s generating capacity. PanTerra’s subsidiary EnviroGold will now have to purchase nearly 50% of its power requirements at spot prices rather than the lower contracted prices, while rectification work at the AES plant is completed.
The Las Lagunas project involves the reclamation of existing tailings by dredging, ultrafine grinding, concentration of gold bearing sulphides through flotation followed by sulphide oxidation using the Albion process, prior to extraction of gold and silver utilising standard carbon-in-leach cyanidation.