Loading ...By Susan Taylor
TORONTO, Sept 1 (Reuters) – Barrick Gold Corp, the world’s largest gold miner, said Thursday it has brought back a former executive to advance a scaled-back development plan for its suspended Pascua-Lama project that will first focus on Argentina.
The gold and silver project, which straddles the border of Argentina and Chile in the Andes Mountains, was put on hold in 2013 due to environmental issues, political opposition, labor unrest and development costs that ballooned to $8.5 billion.
George Bee, who has 16 years experience at Barrick and was most recently Chief Executive at Jaguar Mining, will work on a modest ‘starter’ option for a phased development plan, the company said.
Gold miners are increasingly doing “bite-sized” developments that carry less risk of budget disasters and fewer of the political and environmental disputes that have derailed mega-mines in recent years.
Recent evaluation work indicates that a scalable underground mine plan at Lama may be the best option for a phased approach, Barrick said.
cont. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/barrick-focus-scaled-back-pascua-165149190.html