Mining and Exploration

UK-based Sable Mining Africa has acquired an 80 per cent stake in Sierra Leone’s Red Rock Mining, it has been announced.

Red Rock holds a 50-year lease at the Bagla Hills iron ore deposit in the south-east of Sierra Leone. Bagla Hills lies about 52 kilometres from Kenema, and forms a continuation of the Western Cluster iron ore deposits across the border with Liberia.

 The lease area covers 206.75 square kilometres in total.

UK-based Pan African Resources has been awarded a mining licence on its Manica exploration project in Mozambique.

The mining licence, converted from a prospecting licence, gives Pan African—an African-focused gold mining company—the ability to move the project forward to development stage.

The Manica licence area is situated in central Mozambique, approximately four kilometres north of Manica, which lies about 270 kilometres inland from the port city of Beira.

UK-based oil and gas services provider Petrofac has won a contract worth over $240 million (£149 million) from Shell Iraq to develop facilities in the Majnoon Field.

Under the terms of the contract, Petrofac is providing engineering, procurement, fabrication and construction management services for the development of a new early production system, consisting of two trains each with capacity for 50,000 barrels of oil per day, as well as the upgrading of existing brownfield facilities.

Ireland’s Conroy Gold and Natural Resources has announced positive results on its drilling programme at Clay Lake in County Armagh.

Clay Lake covers an area of around 141 hectares and has returned the highest gold-in-soil values recorded by Conroy on its Irish exploration licences. The current drilling programme builds on the company’s previous positive gold results, which revealed the presence of a broad zone of gold mineralisation.

Agnico-Eagle’s first venture into Mexico’s legendary Sierra Madre gold and silver belt is helping to deliver record results.

Interim CEO Jay Richardson talks to Gay Sutton about four months of change and improvement at Liberty Mines, and why the time is right for a new CEO to take the business forward as a successful nickel exploration and mining operation.

Taseko Mines Limited is about to embark on the third phase of modernisation at Canada’s second largest open pit copper mine. VP of Operations Dave Rouleau talks to Gay Sutton about future-proofing the mine against the cyclical nature of commodity prices.

Goldcorp’s Red Lake mining complex is one of the world’s richest gold resources. General manager Mike Lalonde talks to Gay Sutton about integrating a portfolio of traditional mines into a single forward looking identity.

Lithium Americas Corporation was set up last year after the discovery of the third largest lithium bearing brine deposit in the world. Its 64,572 hectare Cauchari-Olaroz discovery in Argentina will come on stream just in time to feed escalating demand from the manufacturers of electric vehicles.

Oil and gas major Royal Dutch Shell may spend up to R1.4 billion (approx. €145 million) on exploration in the Karoo region of South Africa, according to a report in Johannesburg’s I-Net Bridge.

Shell has asked the Petroleum Agency of South Africa for permission to explore around 90,000 square kilometres predominantly in the western area of the Karoo Basin.