Business
Paramount Gold Nevada's New Preliminary Economic Assessment for Its Sleeper Gold Project in Nevada Demonstrates a Low CapEx, Low Cost of Production Opportunity
WINNEMUCCA, NEVADA--(Marketwired - Oct. 27, 2015) - Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. (NYSE MKT:PZG) ("Paramount") announced today that a new Preliminary Economic Ass
About this update from Paramount Gold Nevada Corp.
[{"type":"text","content":" WINNEMUCCA, NEVADA--(Marketwired - Oct. 27, 2015) - Paramount Gold Nevada Corp. (NYSE MKT:PZG) (\"Paramount\") announced today that a new Preliminary Economic Assessment (\"PEA\") on its 100% owned Sleeper Gold Project has been completed by Metal Mining Consultants (\"MMC\") (www.metalminingconsultants.com) of Denver, Colorado. The report confirms that the Sleeper Gold Project has the potential to be an attractive economic opportunity at current metal prices. The report incorporates a global mineralized material estimate completed by SRK Consulting (www.srk.com) earlier this year (May 5 news release), the results of new metallurgical tests completed over the last two years (June 23 news release), and updated gold ($1250) and silver ($16) pricing that reflects current pricing and SEC standards. In their analysis, MMC evaluated several mining rate and processing alternatives for the large mineralized material inventory consisting of oxide, mixed and sulphide ore. Detailed work was then completed on two distinct development scenarios: A heap leach only operation based on mining higher grade open pit oxide and suitable mixed mineral materials, followed by standard heap leaching; and A larger combined heap leach and biological oxidation option based on open pit mining followed by standard heap leaching for all oxide and mixed mineralized materials and a parallel bio-oxidation plant treating sulphide ore with oxidizing bacteria on a reusable pad followed and by standard heap leaching. MMC concluded that the open pit/heap leach only scenario is the more attractive in the current economic environment and made this development option the Base Case. The highlights of the Base Case scenario are as follows: 30,000 tonnes per day heap leach process facility fed by open pit mining (approximately 11 million tonnes per year throughput with 0.72 strip ratio); Mineralized material containing a total 1.02 million ounces of gold and 5.1 million ounces of silver; Average annual production of 102,000 ounces of gold and 105,000 ounces of silver for 7 years with additional metal recovered during final leaching of 37,850 ounces of gold and 30,500 ounces of silver; Payback period of 2.7 years; Average gold grade for the first three years of 0.47 g/T with 0.41 g/T over the life of mine (LOM); Low initial CapEx of $175 million and total LOM capital and su...