NGEx Resources Says PEA for Combined Los Helados and Josemaria Deposits Nearing Completion

NGEx Resources (TSX:NGQ) provided an update on the progress of a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) to evaluate the company’s Los Helados and Josemaria projects together as one project. NGEx expects the PEA to be complete early in the new year.
As quoted in the press release:

Over the last several years the Company has made three major grass roots discoveries which have grown from raw prospects into some of the largest undeveloped copper-gold-silver resources in the world. The total combined Indicated Resource for the Integrated Project is currently:

• 23.7 billion pounds of copper and 16.2 million of ounces gold, 120 million ounces of silver plus Inferred Resources of 7.7 billion pounds of copper and 4.4 million ounces of gold, 44 million ounces of silver.^(1,2)

The upcoming PEA will be an important step towards realizing our long term vision of developing these discoveries as a mining district with several deposits feeding a central processing plant. The Integrated Project could represent one of the largest and most important potential new mine developments in the region in decades.
The two deposits are located approximately 12 kilometres apart (Figure 1) and the Integrated Project contemplates sequential development of the Josemaria deposit as an open pit mine followed by the block cave underground mining of the Los Helados deposit. Material from both deposits would be processed at a centrally located processing facility. Initial development is expected to target the highest grade portion of the Josemaria deposit which is a near surface zone of supergene enriched mineralization shown in red on the attached section (Figure 2). This mineralization occurs along a ridge and the topography is favorable for open pit mining. As the highest grade material at Josemaria is depleted, production is anticipated to transition to the high grade core of the Los Helados deposit shown in red in the attached section (Figure 3). The higher grade portions of the two deposits contain a combined Indicated mineral resource of:

• 740 million tonnes^(1,2) of 0.50% copper; 0.26 grams/tonne gold, 1.58 grams/tonne silver for a copper equivalent grade of 0.69% CuEq⁽²⁾ at a cut off grade of 0.6% CuEq.

Click here for the full press release.