The project is located in Imperial County in the desert region of south-eastern California, covering an area of 5,721 acres

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KORE Mining starts PEA of Imperial Oxide Gold Deposit (Credit: Pixabay/Khusen Rustamov)

Canada-based mining company KORE Mining has started the preparation of preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for the Imperial oxide gold deposit.

The company said that the engineering work completed for the PEA will play a key role in re-start of the permitting process for Imperial, and is intended to be used to complete a new plan of operations.

KORE has contracted Denver-based Global Resource Engineering (GRE) to lead the development of a PEA of Imperial, using heap leach design from the consulting firm Geo-Logic. The PEA is expected to be completed by in the second quarter of 2020.

GRE provides a broad range of services including geotechnical analysis, mine design, heap leach engineering and tailings facility design. It has completed a site visit to formally start the PEA project and is said to be working on mine design for several months.

KORE COO Marc Leduc said: “Imperial is a rare, unmined, at surface oxide gold deposit amenable to simple run-of-mine heap leaching.

“I have worked closely with and have great confidence in the team KORE has selected to complete Imperial’s preliminary economic assessment.  Imperial will be engineered to the highest standards with full compliance to California’s high standards of environmental regulation and site reclamation.”

Imperial oxide gold deposit

The Imperial project is 100% owned by KORE, and is located in Imperial County, 9miles (15km) away from the operating Mesquite mine, in the desert region of south-eastern California, covering an area of 5,721 acres.

Imperial is a large, near surface oxide gold deposit with potential for open pit (OP) mining and a low-cost cyanide heap leaching (HL) operation.

The deposit’s current gold mineral resource estimate is 877,000 ounces of indicated and 1,336,000 ounces of inferred from 45.7 million tonnes of 0.59 grams per tonne and 90.9 million tonnes of 0.46 grams per tonne, respectively.

SRK Consulting (Canada) prepared the mineral resource estimate with an effective date of 30 December 2019.