Media attention for CRB

In today's business section of The West Australian, can't hurt to get some media attention on the project and introduce it to new eyes;

For nearly a century, Mount Morgan was one of the most significant gold mines in the eastern half of Australia.

More than 35 years after the end of primary mining at its open pit, the mine remains one of Queensland's most significant environmental liabilities.

That's something Perth minnow Carbine Resources is hoping to change through its pitch to become both the miner of Mount Morgan's historic tailings and the remediator of its worst problems.

Carbine says the $63 million project will deliver an average of 46,500 ounces of gold a year, at an all-in sustaining costs of $US243/oz, after copper and other credits.

Mining began at Mount Morgan in 1882 and continued through to 1980, producing more than 8.4 million ounces of gold, 400,000 tonnes of copper and 1.2moz of silver, before then-owner Peko Wallsend closed the primary pit.

Peko continued operating, though, pushing another 28 million tonnes of tailings through the mill to produce another 500,000oz of gold before walking away in 1992, having somehow convinced the Queensland government to take responsibility for the site's big environmental liabilities.

Since then, Mount Morgan has passed through the hands of Perilya, privately owned Moonraker Pty Ltd and Norton Gold Fields.

Through that time, the issue hanging over the mine has been its environmental costs. Both the pit and the tailings are acidic and their proximity to the Dee River has been a constant risk - high rainfall in 2013 overflowed the pit, turning the river a bright turquoise for up to 50km downstream.

The issue is both acid leakage from the pit and old tailings facilities, which are still rich in gold, mixed with soluble copper - which ended earlier attempts to re-process the tailings - and pyrite.

Enter Carbine, which sees Mount Morgan as a metallurgical play, not a mining operation. Rather than running the tailings through a traditional carbon-in-leach plant, where the excess copper would kill profitability, Carbine wants to first leach out the copper then take out the pyrite and sell it to China, and then run the rest through a traditional CIL plant to recover the gold.

The clean tailings then head for a new facility, helping clean up the environmental problems. It's a neat solution, assuming it works on a commercial scale, and there's little doubt there's plenty of gold left.

Even on the limited tailings drilled out so far, Carbine has resources of 1.3mt at 1.23 grams a tonne gold and 0.15 per cent copper, for 329,000oz gold and 12,300t copper. That's enough for an initial eight-year project life, with plenty of upside.