Laverton Gold Project
Location:
Laverton, Western Australia (250km, north-north-east of Kalgoorlie, WA).
Project Details:
The Laverton Gold Project extends over 750sq kms of various mining, exploration and prospecting licences, covering a well endowed portion of the Laverton Greenstone Belt. These tenements encompass numerous known gold deposits with several dozen historic shaft and open pit mines. Crescent currently has 10 gold deposits included in its Reserve Estimate for scheduled production. With an estimated Resource of 2.1 moz additional areas are being defined, delineated and developed for future mining. Continued exploration success through well funded drilling programs should provide a continued supply of ore for future mining.
Mining Operations:
Crescent has successfully negotiated an Ore Purchase Agreement (OPA) with subsidiaries of Barrick Gold for the sale of Crescent’s gold ore to Barrick for processing at their Granny Smith mill.
On 19 April 2010 Crescent announced that it had extended its existing Laverton OPA with Barrick for a further two years, to a four-year term. For more information on the OPA please refer to the Company’s announcements dated 23 February 2009 , 15 June 2009 and 19 April 2010 .
Crescent commenced mining and haulage operations in August 2009, with the first batch of ore processed at Granny Smith in the 30 December 2009 quarter. Total gold production resulting from ore sold to Barrick in the first campaign was 27,251 ounces demonstrating that Crescent is on track to achieve its forecast ore sales to Barrick of >100,000 ounces pa equivalent.
Crescent has completed its 2nd campaign processing at Granny Smith during the 30 March 2010 Quarter. A total of 22,658 ounces of gold and 7,707 ounces of silver were produced via the OPA between Crescent’s Laverton Gold Operations and Barrick (News Release - 11 March 2010 ).
Exploration:
The Laverton Greenstone Belt is one of the best gold endowed Archaean greenstone belts within the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia. The Laverton region, rich in mining history, has seen extensive exploration, development and production with over 28 million ounces gold produced from the area. Major gold mines include Granny Smith, Sunrise and Wallaby - all discovered in the last twenty years. While work at Laverton has been extensive, there remains exciting potential for extending existing mines, development of known deposits into mines and exploration for new discoveries.
The majority of Crescent's exploration success to date has been achieved through relatively shallow drilling to develop open pit ore reserves. Future exploration will target mineralization at depth and along the well-established structural corridors which host the known deposits. The project contains numerous exploration opportunities including extensions to existing open pit resources, high grade underground targets, and conceptual large scale, bulk mining targets. The Laverton area hosts several large, multi-million ounce deposits with the majority of high-grade mineralization and underground development starting at 200 metres depth. At this time less than 2% of all drill holes drilled at Crescent’s Laverton Gold Project penetrate depths below 150 metres.
Significant upside potential remains at many of Crescent’s deposits and advance stage exploration targets in addition to the vast potential of high-grade mineralization at depths. There are significant acquisition opportunities for the many known deposits in the immediate region, which the company is actively pursuing.
Resources and Reserves:
Mineral Resource and Ore Reserves were updated at Crescent’s Laverton Project as of 30 June 2009 to include 4.4 mt @ 1.8 g/t Au for 254,000 oz contained gold in 10 deposits. Mineral Resources for the LGP as of 30 June 2009 were estimated to contain 22 mt @ 1.5 g/t Au for 1,1oz contained gold in 16 deposits.
On 30 November 2009 Crescent entered into an agreement with Barrick Gold and Carbon Energy to acquire additional acreage in the Laverton province of Western Australia thereby increasing Crescent’s existing Resource at Laverton. Additional Resources of 10 mt @ 3.4 g/t to total 1.1 moz dated as of 1 May 2009 were added to Crescent's Resource estimate.
Latest Activity
Mining and haulage operations at the Laverton Project commenced in August 2009.
Campaign processing commenced at Barrick's Granny Smill Mill during the 30 December 2009 Quarter. Click here to view the 30 December 2009 Quarterly Report.
The Company continues to develop its Laverton Gold assets north of Kalgoorlie, focussing on the first six deposits being brought into production. News Release dated 4 May 2010 supports high-grade gold potential of the Laverton area with significant drill intercepts being encountered at the Craiggiemore deposit.
4 May 2010 News Release Highlights include:
19 metres @ 5.2 g/t gold
8 metres @ 9.2 g/t gold
17 metres @ 2.6 g/t gold
24 metres @ 2.6 g/t gold.The full news announcement as well as a full table of significant intercepts can be found in the 4 May 2010 News Release.
As announced in the 30 December 2009 Half Yearly Report , mining plans are currently scheduled out to December 2016.
On 19 April 2010 Crescent announced it had extended its OPA with Barrick by a further two years, to a four-year term.
Project Development Activities
The Company continues to develop its Laverton gold assets with the strategy of accelerating the economic production of known deposits and ore sources as well as identification of “brown fields” mineralisation in order to extend overall mine life of the project and also to deliver operating flexibility in mining schedules. Current mining plans are scheduled out to December 2016 incorporating several phases of mining and development activity. Crescent is mining from proven and probable resources which allows the Company to schedule mining out to December 2016. Reconciliation of mine grades to forecast grades for the pits mined to date have been accurate to expectations.
