Issue link: http://resourceworld.uberflip.com/i/554714
a u g u s t / s e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 5 www.resourceworld.com 9 • Permitted state-of-the-art heap leach processing facility • NI 43-101 compliant gold resource of 552,000 Measured and Indicated and 165,000 Inferred ounces of gold • Contiguous land package covering more than 25,000 acres PershingGold.com | PGLC FAST-TRACKED TO PRODUCTION open pit mines and processing facilities since 2011 in the Pershing gold and silver trend about 95 miles northeast of Reno, Nevada. The company's business strategy is to fast-track the reopening of the Relief Canyon Mine. The Relief Canyon Mine property includes three open-pit mines and a state- of-the-art, fully permitted and constructed heap leach processing facility. The plant has the capacity to process gold-bearing solutions from the leaching of 8 million tons of ore per year. The permitted leach pad can hold 21 million tons and can be readily expanded. Plans include expanding the Relief Canyon deposit through development drilling as well as exploring the 25,000- acre land position to discover, develop and mine additional gold deposits that would be processed in its existing facility. A recent, upgraded NI 43-101 resource estimate showed a measured and indi- cated resource of 552,000 oz gold with inferred resources of 165,000 oz gold, a 34% increase over the previous figures. Although the historic grades of the old Relief Canyon Mine were only about 1.0 g/t gold, Pershing's drill programs have intersected very high grades, including assays of 76.8, 87.9 and 123.9 g/t gold. The deposit remains open to the west, south and east. The drilling results are being incorporated into an updated resource estimate. Pershing Gold is currently permitted to resume mining at Relief Canyon under the existing Plan of Operations. An economic study is planned to be completed in the third quarter of this year with the mining start-up decision based on favorable eco- nomics in the study. essar steel Minnesota LLC is build- ing an iron ore pellet production facility near Nashwauk, in the Mesabi Range of northeast Minnesota. The project is on the former Butler Mine site. The company is part of Essar Steel, a global producer of steel with headquarters in India and oper- ations in India, Canada, US, the Middle East and Asia. Production of taconite, at the Nashwauk operation, is expected to start by late June or July of 2016. The project has a 7.0 million tonnes/year production capacity with an expected mine life of approximately 80 years. The taconite iron mine and pro- cessing facility have a capital cost of US $1.9 billion, making it the biggest construction project on the Iron Range in a generation. Located within the western portion of the Mesabi Range, the project is well served by rail, road and utility infrastructure. All major components of infrastructure are now completed to deliver the entire 7 MTPA of expected pellet production out- put to off-take customers. The project has access to rail lines serviced by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway and Canadian National Railway. All 13 miles of rail line linking the project to the two railway sys- tems have been completed. It is expected that there will be some 800 workers on site at the peak of summer 2015 construction work with about 350 full-time jobs when in operation. n