Donlin Creek

Donlin Creek is located 480km north of Anchorage, Alaska and will be a conventional open pit mine. Production is expected to be 60,000 tonnes per day over the 22-year life of the project. An SRK study puts production at 1.885 million ounces of gold annually in the first seven years at a cash cost of US$223/oz of gold. The remainder of production will average 1.4 million ounces of gold per year at a cash cost of US$276/oz of gold.

The current mine scenarios focus on near-surface ore zones that would be amenable to large-scale, low-cost open-pit mining methods. The gold ore would be crushed, finely ground and then fed to a flotation circuit to separate the gold-bearing sulfide minerals from the rock. The high-grade sulfide concentrate would be oxidized using pressure oxidation in an autoclave. The gold would then be leached from the oxidized residue and recovered with activated carbon in a standard CIL process. Approximately 90% of the gold would be recovered with this process.