Gold Mining to Begin

KHMER TIMES
SUM MANET

A worker walks in an underground gold mine in Indonesia’s Papua province. A similar gold mine is planned in Ratanakiri province by India-based Mesco Gold. Reuters

The Ministry of Mines and Energy has issued the country’s first industrial mining license, which will see Indian-owned Mesco Gold soon start operating an underground gold mine in Rattanakiri province.

Angkor Gold Corp., a Canadian-based mineral exploration company, announced on Monday that the license had been granted for the 12 square kilometer Phum Syarung mine in O’Yadaw district.

“With the grant of the first fully approved mining license in Cambodia to Mesco Gold, a new stage in the evolution of the mining industry in the country has begun, which so far was limited to exploration only,” JK Singh, chairman of Mesco Gold’s parent company, Mesco Group, was quoted as saying.

Angkor Gold holds six exploration licenses in northwestern Cambodia, and sold its rights to the O’Yadaw license to Mesco Gold for $1.9 million, and net smelter returns of between two and 7.5 percent.

“We are very excited and proud of this final approval for Mesco,” Angkor Gold’s CEO Mike Weeks was quoted in the statement.

“This is a new era for Cambodia, and sets the stage to further the development of a world-class mining sector.”

Last month, the Council for the Development of Cambodia granted initial approval for the land to be mined, and issued a certificate of registration to Mesco Gold.

Also in August, Australian mining company GeoPacific Resources announced that it had discovered a major gold deposit in Preah Vihear province. It also found high concentrations of silver near the surface, which the company said indicates deeper, larger deposits.

Last month, Angkor Gold released a statement saying it had found gold in its analysis of ground samples at its Koan Nheak site in Mondulkiri province.

“With all the evidence at hand, the next step is to conduct two to three kilometers of inexpensive shallow east to west trenching. The trenching will allow us to map the subsurface structures and capitalize on our knowledge in the geochemistry assays to highlight the gold mineralized zones,” said Kurtis Dunstone, Angkor Gold’s senior project manager, in the statement.

The exploratory work took six months on the company’s Koan Nheak license, which has been mapped in an area covering 34.5 square kilometers in Mondulkiri province’s Peacock prospect area.