newmont / norton

Boddington / Paddington

Newmont faces delays on start-up at Boddington
25th July 2009, 12:30 WST

Newmont Mining Corp is facing more delays at its wholly owned $US2.9 billion ($3.6 billion) Boddington gold mine south-east of Perth because contractors have slowed their work rate.

Wet weather over the past few weeks has also slowed progress as Newmont tries to produce first gold from the expensive project, the capital cost of which has blown out from an original estimate of between $US1.4 billion and $US1.7 billion to up to $US2.9 billion.

Releasing its June quarter results yesterday, the US miner blamed the delays at Boddington for cutting its Australia-New Zealand production forecast by about 100,000 ounces to 1.4 million to 1.5 million ounces.

The admission suggests the start-up at Boddington, designed to produce about one million ounces a year in what will become Australia’s biggest gold mine, is running about six weeks behind schedule.

the Structure

Structural and mineralogical characteristics of
the Menzies-Boorara Shear Zone, Yilgarn Craton
– implications for variations in the gold potential
of a major fault system
Anthony Morey, Frank Bierlein and Roberto Weinberg
pmd*CRC, School of Geosciences, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3800
[email protected]
Abstract
Gold mineralisation from five deposits within the Menzies-Boorara Shear Zone (MBSZ), Eastern
Goldfields Province, Western Australia, is characterised by several similar features. These
features have been used to constrain the regional Au mineralisation processes.
The MBSZ is a wide zone of intense shearing constrained to a narrow NNW-trending corridor
bounded by granitic batholiths (Figure 1). Gold deposits within the MBSZ are geologically similar
to the world-class gold deposits associated with the Boulder-Lefroy Shear Zone (BLSZ),
however, significant variations also occur. These variations include: (i) the relative thickness of
the greenstone package; (ii) the presence of nearby granites; (iii) a potentially different shear
zone evolution; (iv) gold mineralisation being relatively late and (v) an apparent lack of Te-
bearing minerals within the mineralised assemblages analysed from the MBSZ. These
defferences may be used to help understand why the MBSZ is not as well endowed as the
BLSZ. This paper presents preliminary results from field- and laboratory-based studies and
provides some regional implications for variations in the gold endowment within the Eastern
Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Craton.
Introduction
To date, the MBSZ zone has yielded <100 t of gold, whereas the nearby Boulder-Lefroy Shear
Zone (BLSZ) hosts the giant Golden Mile (>2500t), and two other world-class (>100 t) Au
deposits (Hagemann and Cassidy, 2001). By assessing the structural relationships,
petrogenesis and alteration characteristics of key gold deposits within the MBSZ, this project
aims to understand the nature of gold mineralisation within the MBSZ and to then discuss
genetic links between these and the more heavily endowed deposits associated with the BLSZ.
This will potentially help define target areas for further exploration within the MBSZ, and
elsewhere within the Eastern Goldfields Province.
It has been established that major lode-gold mineralisation within the Eastern Goldfield
Province, is associated with second- to third-order faults, which splay off more regional, and
lesser mineralised first-order faults and shear zones (e.g. Groves and Phillips, 1987; Eisenlohr
et al., 1989). As a >100 km-long, major crustal discontinuity, the MBSZ is a primary shear zone,
and its connecting, more-mineralised splay fault is the BLSZ. By studying the nature of gold
mineralisation from the MBSZ, it is also possible to more quantitatively understand why there is
such variation in gold endowment between primary and their higher-order connecting faults.
To characterise mineralisation within the MBSZ, five representative deposits – selected along its
entire extent – have been chosen. From north to south, these deposits are; Yunndaga, New
Boddington, Broad Arrow, Paddington and Golden Ridge