First Majestic Silver Reports 7-percent Fall in Proven and Probable Reserves

Precious Metals

First Majestic Silver Corp. (TSX:FR,NYSE:AG) released the 2014 mineral reserve and resource estimates for its existing mineral properties in Mexico.

For the proven and probable reserves category, silver metal content came in at 101.1 million ounces of silver; that’s a decline of 7 percent from the year-ago period.

As quoted in the press release:

Starting this year, First Majestic is reporting Mineral Resources inclusive of Mineral Reserves; readers are cautioned of this change since the Company had previously reported Mineral Resources exclusive of Mineral Reserves.
The largest change to Mineral Reserves occurred at La Encantada where the old tailings were downgraded from Proven and Probable Reserves to Inferred Resources after the Company’s decision to suspend the reprocessing of the old tailings due to the low metal price environment. This resulted in a 76% increase in the Reserves silver grade, a 57% decrease in total Reserve tonnes and a 24% decrease in Reserve silver metal content. However, the underground Proven and Probable Mineral Reserves increased by 56% to 3.2 million tonnes containing 28.4 million ounces of silver with average silver grade of 276 g/t.
Silver metal content in the Measured and Indicated Resource category totaled 152.4 million ounces. In addition, the silver metal content in the Inferred Resource totaled 170.4 million ounces, a decrease of 18% compared to the prior year due mainly to the impact of lower metal price assumptions, the adoption of the stricter CIM Definition Standards, and the subtraction of Resources for the Peñasco Quemado and La Frazada projects, which were disposed of during 2014.

Complete 2014 mineral reserve and resource estimates are as follows: