Nevada Gold Mines (NGM) continues to demonstrate the impact of Barrick Gold’s strategy of combining the best assets with the best people as new projects and prospects secure its future as a high-quality, long-life operation for decades to come, NGM Chairman Mark Bristow said. Speaking during a visit by a group of equity analysts and investors to see first-hand the development of the Goldrush underground project, the open pit operations and processing facilities at Cortez, and the Third Shaft project and core shack at Turquoise Ridge, Bristow said NGM had unlocked significant synergies by consolidating mines, teams, processing facilities and landholdings.
Since the formation of the joint venture with Newmont three years ago, NGM has produced 10 million ounces (oz) of gold and distributed significant cashflows to the joint venture partners. Barrick operates NGM, the world’s largest gold mining complex, and owns 61.5% of the business with Newmont Corp. holding the rest.
NGM has also added 14.7 million oz of proven and probable mineral reserves and 8.5 million oz of inferred mineral resources. This growth has been further enhanced by Barrick’s Fourmile project with 350,000 oz of indicated mineral resources and 2.2 million oz of inferred mineral resources. Fourmile is not currently included in the NGM joint venture.
Bristow said that greatly improved knowledge of the orebodies had supported robust 10-year plans and increased the pre-merger life of mine substantially, while new opportunities for further optimization as well as new discoveries and innovations continued to extract more value from the assets.
“NGM’s flagship development project is Goldrush, a world-class underground deposit at the Cortez complex, with a life of mine plan in excess of 20 years,” Bristow said. “It is expected to employ 500 people during construction and 570 during operation.”
“NGM has also built strong relations across the full spectrum of the mines’ stakeholders, and its wide-ranging support for educational and other community development initiatives is securing its social license as a valuable partner with Nevada and its people.”
These initiatives include support for the College of Southern Nevada, its partnership with Discovery Education as well as its ongoing work with the University of Nevada, Reno and the Great Basin College to develop mining-focused curricula.
