ALLIED Gold has committed A$66 million (K172 million) to development of its fully-owned Simberi oxide gold project, which remains on stream to conduct its first gold pour in late October.
In its quarterly report, Allied Gold said yesterday the accommodation village and wharf had been completed and are fully operational with the ball mill and scrubber installed in early this month.
It said some delays had occurred with construction activities due to problems in obtaining work permits and visas for the workforce of the structural and mechanical installation contractor.
Bad weather and rough seas has also delayed the sinking of the deep sea tailings placement pipeline, it said.

The impending completion of the Simberi project is evidence of the ongoing upsurge in exploration and mining commencing in 2003 after a decade of stagnation and decline, spearheaded by legislative reforms undertaken by the Somare Government.

A smaller gold mine at Sinivit began operations several months ago. The much larger Hidden Valley project of Harmony Gold will begin production on gold and silver at the end of next year with Ramu Nickel likely to begin operations in late 2009.

Other major advanced exploration projects include Marengo Mining’s Yandera copper-molybdenum project, Xstrata’s Frieda River copper-gold project, Frontier Resources Kodu copper-gold project and Buffalo Gold’s Mt Kare project.
Allied presently has 2.39 million ounces of gold resources at Simberi, including 783,000 ounces of oxide and transitional gold reserves.
Road channel sampling work on the Monum Creek prospect, about midway between the Sorowar and Pigiput deposits, have yielded significant results which have the potential to greatly increase the quantity of gold reserves.
Channel sampling has included 30m averaging 1.19g a tonne of gold, 90m @ 1.66 g/t, 95m @ 1.66 g/t and 295m @ 1.17 g/t.
Allied said the Monum Creek mineralisation appeared to be a south easterly extension of the main Sorowar deposit with a strike length extension of about 300m compared with Sorowar’s total strike length of 700m.
Exploration drilling is expected to commence in the September quarter following the delivery, commissioning and deployment of four drilling rigs during the period.
Allied said the Simberi oxide project was a stage 1 open pit mining project that would extract ore from at least seven deposits above the underlying sulphide mineralisation.
The company has purchased the MV Lady Geraldine barge to minimise delays that could be caused by late delivery of structural steelwork.
Ore will be trucked to the process plant until an aerial ropeway is completed in the March quarter next year.
At this stage process plant work is 72% complete with overall process plant design work 98% complete and procurement 92% complete.

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