Golden Star Resources announced that it had restarted its mining operations at the Pampe gold deposit in Ghana. The Pampe mine is situated near the company owned Bogoso processing plant in Ghana. This should help increase the production and reduce the cash operating costs for the mine.
The Pampe gold mine is likely to produce 75,000 tonnes of ore per month starting in January 2012 as per the company. This and the input from the Bogoso / Prestea mines will help increase production at the Bogoso plant to 80,000 to 90,000 ounces of gold in 2012.
The estimated cast operating cost of the production is expected to be $650 per ounce. The current second quarter cash operating costs for Golden Star at the Bogoso plant was reported as $1,383 per ounce of gold. The plant has a capacity of 1.5 million tonnes a year but is being upgraded and will be re-commissioned in January.
The Pampe non-refractory deposit is on the southern end of the Akropong Trend, which is a subsidiary fault structure of the prolific Ashanti Trend. The Akropong Trend also hosts the multi-million ounce Edikan gold project operated by Perseus Mining.
Tom Mair, President and Chief Executive Officer, said that the Pampe pit will supply non-refractory ore to the Bogoso Oxide Processing Plant, increasing overall gold production and lowering overall cash operating costs at the Bogoso/Prestea Mine.
He was also excited about their current drilling program aimed at finding more non-refractory ore at Pampe as the ore body is open in all directions. They continued to strengthen operations throughout the organization and are intensely focused on increasing production, lowering costs and returning value to our shareholders."