Barrick Pours Gold at Ruby Hill
CBarrick Gold announced the first gold pour at its Ruby Hill open-pit,
heap leach project on Feb. 20, 2007, following a successful restart of the operation
5 km southeast of Eureka, Nevada. Ruby Hill was previously an operating mine until
2002. The project is expected to produce about 120,000 oz of gold at cash costs
of $240 to $250/oz during 2007. Final capital investment for renewed production
was expected to come in below the project estimate of $75 million, including almost
$30 million in new mining equipment and processing upgrades.
Ruby Hill is mining
the East Archimedes deposit, a deeper continuation of ore mined previously at
the site. Ore is about 89% oxide and 11% sulphide. The highgrade sulphide ores
are trucked 110 miles north to Barrick’s Goldstrike operation for processing.
On-site processing of oxides includes gold recovery by zero-discharge heap leach
and carbon column facilities. The East Archimedes deposit had approximately 1.1
million oz of proven and probable gold reserves at yearend 2006.