Inmet Mining has announced an initial resource estimate for the Balboa copper-gold porphyry discovery, originally announced March 8, 2011, on its Cobre Panama property in central Panama.
Indicated resources for the deposit total 4.8 billion lb of copper and 1.9 million oz of gold, and inferred resources total 2.1 billion lb of copper and 800,000 oz of gold. The addition of the Balboa resource increases Cobre Panama’s total contained copper in the measured and indicated categories by 19% to 30.6 billion lb. Measured and indicated contained gold increased by 29% to 8.4 million oz. While average copper grades at Balboa are similar to the resource grades of the other Cobre Panama deposits, the gold grades are 50% higher than the average resource grades.
Technical work continues on metallurgical recoveries, pit design, and other engineering work to allow the Balboa resources to be converted to reserves and ultimately included in the Cobre Panama mine plan. Inmet expects to be able to provide an update in the second half of 2012.
Recent drill results testing the northwest down-dip extension of the Balboa deposit returned high grades over significant widths, suggesting that the high-grade core remains open to the northwest.
