Mine Details
Porgera
http://www.barrick.com
gold, silver, Camp, FiFo
Phone:
Address:
PO Box 484, Mt hagen, PNG,
State: PO Box 484, Mt hagen, PNG,
Email:
In 2004 the Porgera gold mine, located in the Enga Province, in Papua New Guinea's highlands, 600 kilometres north west of Port Moresby and 130 kilometres west of Mount Hagen, produced one million ounces of gold at a cost of $192 an ounce. It is accessed by plane and road 680 kilometres from the nearest port at Lae. By 2009 the production cost per ounce had risen to $515. At that time it employed 2,500 direct employees and 500 contractors and had the reputation of being one of the world's top ten producing gold mines. In 2013 Barrick Gold's share of gold from the venture amounted to 482,000 ounces, at a cost of $1,294.00 an ounce. The company's share of the proven and probable gold reserves at the mine at the end of December, 2013, stood at 3.1 million ounces.
The Porgera gold mine is operated as a joint venture between Barrick Gold with a 95 percent interest and the Papua New Guinea (PNG) Government through Mineral Resources Enga (MRE) . MRE is owned by the Enga Provincial government, the Pogera landowners and the PNG Government. MRE holds the remaining five percent interest in the mine. The Porgera gold mine began operations in 1990 when it was owned by Placer Dome. Placer Dome sold its share in the mine to Barrick Gold in 2006. At that time Emperor Gold Mine held a 20 percent interest in the mining operation. Emperor Gold sold its interest to Barrick Gold in 2007. A move that gave Barrck Gold its 95 percent ownership. The mine operates as an underground and open pit mining operation. Since becoming operational the Porgera mine has produced more than 16 million ounces of gold and just on three million ounces of silver, an amount that equals around 12 percent of Papua New Guinea's total annual export earnings.
Porgera Ore Milling and Processing has Been Developed in Stages
The gold and silver bearing ore produced at the Porgera mine is milled and processed through a series of stages. The first stage uses a concentrator and leach/CIP circuit that produces a sulphide flotation concentrate as well as a gravity concentrate which is leached to recover silver and up to 70 percent of gold. All residue was stored in a storage pond until stage two pressure oxidation came online in 1991. Since that time sulphide flotation concentrate has been fed into the pressure oxidation circuit. This allows the gold to be released and recovered by a CIP circuit and cyanide leach followed by on site refining to produce dore. Stage three came into production in 1992. It consists of a gyratory crusher, semi-autogenous (SAG) mill, ball mill and the expansion of the current concentrator.
Porgera Underground ore Contains More Gold per Tonne
In 2006, the mill feed was sourced on a tonnage basis, with 85 percent coming from the open pit and stockpiled ore and 15 percent coming from the underground operation. The underground sourced ore accounted for 30 percent of the contained gold in the mill feed. In more recent years the inclusion of the Eastern Zone as part of the mining operation has added further reserves and extended the life of the mining operation considerably.
The Porgera open pit is mined as a traditional hard rock mining operation using 10 metre benches. During 2005 the open pit mining fleet was reduced to four DML blast hole drills, four O&K RH200 hydraulic face shovels and 25 CAT 789 haul trucks. This equipment gave the operation a production capacity of 45 million tonnes a year. At the same time the underground production fleet was made up of three Eimco EJC430 haulage trucks, and four Elphinstone AD45 haulage trucks, two Elphinstone 1700 loaders, one Elphinstone 2800 loader, two Elphinstone R2900 loaders, two Tamrock 1006 production drills, two Atlas Copco H352 jumbos and one Atlas Copco H322 rockbolter.
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