Global
CORTEZ
100 kilometers south-west of Elko,
Nevada, in Lander and Eureka counties.
Pipeline and Cortez Hills deposits mined
by conventional opencast methods;
Cortez Hills underground is an underhand
cut-and-fill operation.
N
GOLDSTRIKE
40 kilometers north of Carlin, Nevada, in
Elko and Eureka counties.
Betze-Post opencast mine is a truck-
and-shovel operation; Meikle and Rodeo
underground are long-hole open stoping,
and drift-and-fill operations.
Legend:
Property Boundary
Open Pit Mineralization
0
2000
4000
Feet
Underground Mineralization
April 2017
Mineralisation at the Goldstrike mine.
tasks like bulk sampling and developing
sampling methods to meet automated
advancements.
The Cortez operations are located close
to the town of Elko in north-eastern
Nevada. The Cortez Mine is a joint
venture between two wholly owned
subsidiaries of Barrick: Barrick Cortez
Incorporated (60%) and Barrick Gold
Finance (40%). The Cortez operations
consist of the Pipeline, Crossroads, Gap,
Cortez Hills (CHOP), and Pediment
open pits; the Cortez Hills underground
(CHUG) mine; a 13 000 ton per day
(stpd) carbon-in-leach (CIL) gold plant;
heap leach pads and heap leach processing
plants; and the planned Crossroads open
pit, with additional mineral resources
contained in the Cortez Pits and Gold
Acres open pits. The nearby deposit of
Hilltop is also part of the mine but does
not have reportable resources at this time.
The open pit is a large-scale operation
using a conventional truck and shovel fleet
that mines about 400 000stpd of ore and
waste. Mining operations move between
the various pits over the life of mine
(LOM) plan. The underground mine is
a 2 000stpd mechanised mine. Ore from
the mines is treated at an oxide mill at the
site, on leach pads, and refractory ore is
shipped to Barrick’s Goldstrike operation
for processing. Barrick completed a
prefeasibility study (PFS) for underground
mining in the Deep South Zone (the
Cortez Underground Expansion Project),
below currently permitted areas of the
CHUG. The PFS indicated that the project
has the potential to contribute average
underground production of more than
300 000 ounces per year between 2022 and
2026 at average all-in sustaining costs of
about USD580 per ounce.
More detailed planning, subsequent to
the PFS, has res ulted in the current LOM
beginning underground gold production
from the Deep South Zone in 2022 and
producing 300 000 ounces per year between
2023 and 2027. Initial capital costs are
estimated to be USD153-million.
Barrick expects that dewatering and
development work could begin as early as
2019 or 2020, with initial production from
the Deep South Zone commencing in
2022. The expansion of the underground
mine is expected to offset the impact of
the end of mining in the Cortez Hills
open pit, which is scheduled to conclude
towards the end of this year.
Barrick Nevada is an integrated gold
mining operation that combines the
Cortez and Goldstrike properties in
Nevada, employing a total of 3 000
employees and 800 contractors. The
operation uses both opencast and
underground mining methods and hosts
a range of processing facilities, including
heap leaching, roasting, autoclaving,
conventional leaching, and thiosulfate
(cyanide-free) leaching.
Barrick Nevada produced 2.3
million ounces of gold in 2017, at a
cost of sales of USD792 per ounce and
all-in sustaining costs of USD624 per
ounce.
Production in 2018 is anticipated to
be 2.0–2.255 million ounces of gold,
at a cost of sales of USD760–USD810
per ounce, and all-in sustaining
costs of USD610–USD660 per ounce.
Proven and probable gold reserves at
Cortez as of 31 December 2017 were
10.0 million ounces (167.0 million
tonnes, grading 1.87 grams per tonne).
At Goldstrike, proven and probable
gold reserves were 8.4 million ounces
(67.8 million tonnes, grading 3.86
grams per tonne).
Source: Most of the above information
has been sourced by Barrick Gold ’s
technical report about Cortez Hill, dated
21 March 2016.
MAY 2018 MINING MIRROR
[7]