News Today
Gold major outlines exploration focus
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The 2004 annual report of gold-miner and, for many South Africans still, iconic major company AngloGold Ashanti is filled with information.
You want a summary of mining rights and mining property titles in Brazil? It is there, on page 49, as is a much more detailed account of Ghanaian mining legislation; in fact, the com- pany’s 2004 annual report gives greater and lesser degrees of detail on the mining rights and property titles in Argentina, Australia, Guinea, Mali, Namibia, Tanzania and the US, as well as Brazil and Ghana and, of course, South Africa.
This just emphasises that AngloGold Ashanti is now, and has been for years, a company that operates globally.
It is actively mining in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Namibia, Tanzania, the US, and Zimbabwe, as well as in South Africa.
Look at the production figures – last year the group’s gold production was an impressive 6 052 000 oz; but, of this, 3 079 000 oz came from its South African operations and 2 973 000 oz from its non-South African oper-ations.
AngloGold Ashanti now produces almost exactly half its gold outside South Africa (49%, in fact). Note further – the figure for non-South African production was 27% higher in 2004 than in 2003.
Of course, the figures for the rest of the world were boosted by the Ashanti merger, which brought in an attributable 485 000 oz of Ghanaian gold last year; on the other hand, the group sold its stakes in US miner Jerritt Canyon in 2003 and in Australia’s Union Reefs in 2004 – the former contributed 107 000 oz to the 2003 figures and the latter 74 000 oz.
Further, in South Africa, the Ergo tailings dams retreatment operation contributed 203 000 oz to the total gold produced in this country during 2003 and 222 000 oz last year; Ergo is now in the process of closing down.
Gold ounces produced, however, do not automatically translate into profits – last year the group’s Ghanaian operations generated an attributable adjusted operating loss of $22-million.
Add up all the attributable adjusted operating profits and deduct the attributable adjusted operating losses of all of the group’s operations and you come up with $400-million on the plus side (the group’s total adjusted operating profit is higher than this, at $434-million – it also earns income from other sources) and, again, almost half ($198-million) is from operations outside South Africa. Of course, South Africa remains by far the single largest gold reserve for the group.
Adding together proved and probable reserves, the contained gold in the group’s South African orebodies comes to 1 217,5 t, out of the group’s global total of 2 454 t – but notice, the South African figure now represents just under half of AngloGold Ashanti’s total gold reserves.
Turning to resources, and adding up measured, indicated and inferred, the contained gold in South Africa is estimated at 3 638,7 t, with a global total of 6786 t.
This time, the South African figure is over half of the total, but not by much.
In reserves, Ghana ranks second, with 367,3 t of contained gold; Tanzania third, with 281,1 t; Australia fourth, with 191,5 t; the US fifth, with 120,6 t; and Brazil sixth, with 86,9 t.
(In terms of resources, the rankings are the same, except that Brazil and the US swap places.) Another interesting statistic is the differing productivity levels of the group’s various regions – for South Africa, it is 255 g per employee; for Ghana 376 g; for Australia 539 g; and for Brazil 1 117 g.
Given all these facts and figures, and the already long life of gold-mining in South Africa, it is not surprising that less than a fortieth of the group’s exploration expenditure last year was spent in South Africa – $2-million out of $81-million.
All exploration in this country was brownfields and, globally, brownfields exploration accounted for $44-million of the exploration expenditure, leaving $37-million for greenfields work.
About $11-million of the greenfields exploration was carried out in ‘new frontiers’, namely China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mongolia and, in the US, the State of Alaska.
However, the country which saw the greatest greenfields exploration expenditure was Peru, with $7-million, while the country with the greatest brownfields exploration expenditure was Brazil, with $10-million; add $1-million in greenfields work and Brazil’s total exploration expenditure of $11-million was the greatest for any single country or region; Australia and South-East Asia ranked second at $10-million, of which $6-million was brownfields and $4-million greenfields.
Sadly, 32 of the group’s employees were killed in work-related accidents last year – 31 of them in South Africa and one in Mali, at the Morila mine.
What this all adds up to is that AngloGold Ashanti is no longer the helpless hostage to the fortunes of one country that it once was; but it remains firmly rooted in Africa and is clearly very far from leaving, or even thinking of leaving, South Africa.
as his company’s hostile bid for Gold Fields showed signs of faltering.
The days of reckoning are coming !
haben ca. 45 %. Der Rest haengt am hals von einer Hindu. So, das Gold ging hauptsaechlich vom westen in den osten.