Golden Phoenix Minerals Inc. announced that it has received the initial resource estimates for the Santa Rosa gold mine.
The Sparks, Nevada based mining company had mining consultant SRK draw up the report. SRK is currently preparing a NI 43-101 technical report on the property. SRK offers exploration, feasibility, mine planning and mine closure services.
Located in Panama the Santa Rosa project was previously operated as an open pit heap leach operation that mined gold and silver. The production at the mine was shut down due to low prices of gold in 1999. Golden Phoenix Panama, S.A., the joint venture entity that owns and operates the Santa Rosa gold mine has now decided to make a profit from the currently upward spiraling gold prices.
John Bolanos, the Vice President of Exploration for Golden Phoenix said that in addition to SRK's inferred resource estimate of 669,000 contained ounces of gold, the Santa Rosa project has an additional unspecified volume of mineralized material on former heap leach pads throughout the property. They expected to begin assessing this additional material in the near future.
Golden Phoenix released a statement saying that it intended to advance the project to production in an orderly fashion. This would include a survey controls to guide a drilling program, metallurgical testing, verification of potential mineral resources in the partially leached historical heaps and also a preliminary economic assessment for the property.