Australian mining company Centamin Egypt Ltd recently announced its plans to expand drilling activities at the Sukari project in Egypt's Eastern Desert region, in a bid to rapidly increase the company’s gold reserves.
The company will raise its drilling capacity on the site to six rigs through the addition of two multi-purpose rigs—reverse circulation (RC) and diamond—and one dedicated RC rig, a company statement disclosed.
The new rigs are expected to accelerate Centamin's drilling operations significantly, with an additional 25,000 meters of RC and diamond drill core to be completed at a rate of approximately 5,000 meters per month.
The measured resource at Sukari currently stands at 1.73 million ounces, with the majority of this resource in the southern 400 meters of the 600-meter long AMUN zone. The company next plans to commence follow up drilling of the Hapi shute, which returned high grade intersections.
Centamin is the only publicly listed company to be actively exploring for gold and base metals in Egypt, operating a 4,500 square kilometer gold mining concession in the country since 1996. Centamin is free to export and sell gold on international markets. A royalty of three percent applies to gold production, and Centamin is exempt from all other Egyptian taxes and duties. — (menareport.com)
© 2002 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
