Panoramic reviews Gidgee on higher A$ gold price

PERTH (miningweekly.com) – ASX-listed Panoramic Resources on Friday told shareholders that in response to the higher Australian dollar gold price, the company would undertake a review of the scoping study into its Gidgee project, in Western Australia.

The miner noted that over the past few weeks there has been renewed interest from potential buyers for the project, with new parties signing confidentiality agreements, while selected parties have been granted access to the data room.

The nickel-focused company last year launched a more formal process to sell the Gidgee project.

Since the release of the 2012 scoping study, Panoramic has undertaken resource drilling, metallurgical testwork, and has updated capital and operating cost estimates for a range of mining and processing scenarios.

The company said that with the higher gold price, an update of the scoping study would be undertaken.

The 2012 scoping study estimated that the project would require a capital investment of some A$127-million to deliver an 80 000 oz/y to 90 000 oz/y operation.

The project covers some 1 200 km2 of prospective tenements in the East Murchison province.

Meanwhile, Panoramic on Friday reported that its Savannah nickel operations, also in Western Australia, would remain in production until mid-May.

In January this year, Panoramic announced that it would place the Savannah operations on care and maintenance, in response to the falling US nickel price and the uncertain outlook for the price over the foreseeable future.

The miner reported that based on processing all of the Copernicus ore currently stockpiled, and the requirement to blend Copernicus ore with Savannah ore, the operations would continue to process ore until mid-May, with the last concentrate shipment expected to depart by the second half of that month.

By the time the mine would enter care and maintenance, the Savannah operation would have a mining inventory of some 1.3-million tonnes, at 1.2% nickel for 15 600 t of nickel.

A decision to restart the Savannah operation would likely coincide with the development of the Savannah North project, where Panoramic was currently completing a prefeasibility study.