| Mineral Ridge Gold Mine, Nevada | |
Executive Summary |
 |
|
Exploration Potential |
|
|
Detailed Description |
|
|
District History |
|
|
Maps |
|
The Mineral Ridge gold mine is located 4 miles northwest of the town of Silver Peak and 32 miles west of Tonopah in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The property consists of 54 patented and 110 unpatented mining claims totaling nearly 2,685 acres, or 4.2 square miles.
On November 8, 2000 Golden Phoenix Minerals purchased the Mineral Ridge gold mine by making a purchase payment of $225,000. The purchase acquired the gold reserve for $1.03 per ounce of gold (the total mineable gold reserve is 209,200 ounces.) Prior mine operators had spent about $30 million on the property, which include about $18 million in office, process, and ancillary facilities, about $2 million in engineering and feasibility studies, about $6 million in drilling and assays, $2 million in past permitting costs, and the remainder in site preparation. The property comes with an active leach pad with room to hold the currently identified ore reserve. Once a new reclamation plan and bond is in place, full mining and production will then proceed.
The Mineral Ridge property holds 4 separate economically mineable gold deposits. The mine reserve, at a 0.035 opt Au cut off grade, is 2,658,340 tons averaging 0.079 opt for 209,226 contained ounces of gold. This reserve is contained in a total resource of 8,314,000 tons averaging 0.061 opt gold (at a 0.02 opt Au cutoff grade) for a total of 506,000 ounces gold. The property further holds excellent exploration potential with identified targets containing a resource of up to a possible 3 to 4.5 million additional ounces on the property.
When the Company obtains the operating capital it needs, then the following operating plan will be initiated in the sequence presented. This plan will realize 1.) gold production from reprocessing the crushed ore on the leach pad through a washing plant and increased gold production from the ADR plant with the addition of new cyanide to the regular leach fluids to aid in gold recovery, 2.) significant new gold production from initiating open pit mining and possibly underground mining to be processed by a new gravity cyanide gold recovery plant, and 3.) recovery of salable industrial minerals derived from the crushed alaskite and quartz rocks. The Company has a business plan that lays out this entire operating plan.
The total value of the gold and industrial mineral sales over nine-year mine life, at a $275 gold price, is $141,555,000. The total operating cost, which includes royalty payments, refining costs, mining costs, milling costs, reclamation costs, and operating expenses is $108,161,000. The average gold production cost is estimated to be $158 per ounce for the nine-year mine life. The net income after taxes is estimated to be $33,394,000.
