From Mining Weekly

West Africa-focused gold miner Semafo this week said it had received permission to develop its high-grade Siou and Fofina deposits, both located near the Montreal-based miner’s flagship Mana mine, in Burkina Faso.

President and CEO Benoit Desormeaux on Wednesday said now that the company had received the authorization, which represented the second-last step in the mining permit extension process, it could start prestripping and road construction work at Siou in the coming months and start production in the second quarter of 2014.

“This places us at least six months ahead of our most recent schedule, a real accomplishment given Siou’s two-year timeline from discovery to production.

“In addition, the accelerated permitting process allows us to forecast production start-up at Fofina in 2015, instead of in 2016 as originally planned,” Desormeaux said.

Owing to the Siou deposit being located 15 km from the Mana processing plant and ore from Siou being trucked to the plant, bringing the Siou deposit into production would require minimal capital. There would also be no need to relocate villages, invest in new infrastructure or other significant ancillaries.

Semafo had, therefore, halved the capital expenditures needed in 2014 to bring Siou to production, to $12.5-million from the $25-million initial budget.

TSX-listed Semafo said the Siou deposit remained open laterally and at depth, and significant inferred resources were located about 180 m below the surface, which would require additional tighter-spaced drilling in order to convert them to compliant mineral reserves, which was scheduled for 2015/16.

Semafo had allocated the $3.5-million remaining in the 2013 exploration budget for activities in the Siou vicinity during the fourth quarter, to find and define new drill targets for 2014. Exploration would consist mainly of 120 000 m of auger drilling, geochemical surveys and field proofing, as well as 8 500 additional soil samples.

Written by Henry Lazenby | Read more at Mining Weekly