JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – African gold mining company Randgold Resources is looking across the Atlantic along the northern edge of South America, which effectively hosts the same geology as West Africa, where the London-listed company has its biggest gold-mining base.
This is in addition to intensifying exploration efforts in West Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Randgold’s geologists are building geological models and the area covering northern Brazil, Surinam, French Guiana and British Guyana and Venezuela, is on the company’s watch list.
“It’s exactly the same geology as West Africa,” Randgold CEO Dr Mark Bristow, who recently visited the area, told Mining Weekly Online. “Right now, Venezuela is a no-go area, but the geology is pretty good,” Bristow noted.
The six-mine company’s star performer in the three months to June 30 was the Kibali mine, in the DRC, where costs have been lowered 11% to $651/oz through three hydropower plants that provide lower cost energy to the operation.
The third hydropower station at Azambi has been built by an all-Congolese team.
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