en.Wedoany.com Reported - Paramount Gold Nevada has announced the results of a Preliminary Assessment (IA) analyzing the feasibility of restarting its wholly-owned Sleeper Gold Project in Humboldt County, Nevada, USA. Initiated in April, this assessment follows the S-K 1300 guidelines and aims to evaluate the economic prospects of resuming operations at the previously producing Sleeper mine.
The assessment focuses on processing existing waste rock dumps and extracting in-situ oxide and mixed mineral resources using conventional open-pit mining methods. Ore will be processed at a facility with a daily capacity of 30,000 tons, utilizing a crushing-agglomeration-heap leaching method and the Merrill-Crowe recovery process.
According to the assessment results, the project has an after-tax net present value of $402 million at an 8% discount rate. Based on assumptions of a gold price of $3,600 per ounce and a silver price of $48 per ounce, the after-tax internal rate of return is 44%, with an estimated payback period of approximately 1.4 years. Over the expected 17-year mine life, average annual gold production is approximately 65,000 ounces, with total recoverable gold production estimated at about 1.1 million ounces. The mine plan includes utilizing approximately 47 million tons of mineralized waste rock material, containing about 420,000 ounces of recoverable gold, intended as a low-cost source for early production and cash flow.
Rachel Goldman, CEO of Paramount Gold, stated that the Sleeper Preliminary Assessment depicts an exciting restart opportunity with strong expected returns, a short payback period, and a 17-year mine life. She noted that in the first five years alone, the project has an extremely low strip ratio of just 0.74:1, and is expected to produce approximately 348,000 ounces of gold and 1.33 million ounces of silver, generating about $514 million in after-tax cash flow under the base case and $826 million under the optimistic case.
Updated mineral resource estimates indicate proven and probable resources of 1.99 million ounces of gold for the project. The Sleeper mine previously produced 1.66 million ounces of gold and 2.3 million ounces of silver between 1986 and 1996. The study recommends that Paramount Gold undertake an $8.7 million advancement program, including further drilling, metallurgical testing, and permitting work, to support a future pre-feasibility study. Permitting activities are expected to proceed within the current operational plan scope.
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