The latest Barrick Gold Corporation results presentation was stunning from a US gold revival perspective.
The results highlighted the strong revival of Nevada as a mature gold area that has been injected with new life through the
logical coming together of big listed mining groups.
Separately, Barrick and Newmont were not catching the eye in Nevada but, together, Nevada Gold Mines is promising a far better story, with the leadership coming in the form of a Witwatersrand stalwart, namely Dr Mark Bristow, who is now Barrick’s president and CEO.
Nevada Gold has a new spring in its step as a joint venture. Barrick has 61.5% and Newmont Goldcorp Corporation 38.5% and stakeholders are already benefiting.
But let us go back a bit to the late part of 2018 when Barrick took steps to merge with Randgold Resources, a company formed down the road from Johannesburg’s central business district, once the heart of Witwatersrand gold activity.
Then, in the first half of 2019, Newmont acquired Goldcorp, and then Barrick and Newmont pooled their Nevadan assets to create Nevada Gold Mines. Is this pragmatism that the Witwatersrand could have done with?
Note that the first four letters of the name ‘Randgold’ are a play on the last four letters of ‘Witwatersrand’. But Randgold is now out of sight and out of mind, just like our ‘Witwatersrand’.
Is this because South Africans let it be so, even though the Witwatersrand still hosts more gold than has been extracted from it in the last 130 years? There has never been a successful technology thrust to mine what is still there. Instead, gold mining in South Africa has been allowed to rapidly fall through the floor.
If there had been a will, would there have been a way? There was certainly no collective public, private or labour will to find a way. Government pulled one way, labour pulled another way and the private sector pulled out.
Had there been a collective will, would the Witwatersrand be reviving its gold mining in the way that the US has, in what was a previously fairly mature Nevada.
Suddenly, the outlook is far brighter for the US gold area to the extent that automation is progressing promisingly.
Technology adoption is improving that outlook. For example, blast-hole drilling is being carried out remotely at Nevada.
“You can drill from the office,” Bristow told Mining Weekly last week, when Barrick reported second-quarter production of 1.35-million ounces and 27% higher output.
“We’ve pretty much got a fully automated mine in sections,” he added.
The will to succeed like never before is apparent in the vigorous new approach Barrick is adopting.
It is also incredible how strong, new practical steps are sometimes also rewarded by supportive external elements, in this case a rising gold price that is clinging to the $1 500/oz, while progressive mining is taking all-in sustaining costs well below the $1 000/oz level.