Barry Olson
GoldCorp
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Building the Peñasquito Mine
Peñasquito is Mexico’s largest open pit mine. It is located in the northeastern portion of the State of Zacatecas in north-central Mexico near the town of Mazapil. It consists of two open pits – Peñasco and Chile Colorado – that contain gold, silver, lead and zinc. The site consists of two 50,000 tpd capacity sulfide processing lines and a 30,000 tpd capacity high pressure grinding roll (HPGR) circuit. Following a ramp up period, full processing capacity of 130,000 tpd is expected towards the end of Q1 2012.
Peñasquito lies within the eastern Mexican fold-belt comprised of folded Mesozoic clastic and carbonate sedimentary units. The world-class Peñasquito Au-Ag-Zn-Pb deposit is centered on two funnel-shaped diatreme breccia pipes, cutting Cretaceous clastic units above a Tertiary felsic intrusive complex. Disseminated and lesser fracture-controlled electrum, sphalerite, galena, and various silver sulfosalts are hosted by milled-clast breccias within the diatremes, and by calcareous siltstone and sandstone in the surrounding mineralized halo. Both of the breccia pipes sit within a hydrothermal alteration shell, consisting of a central sericite-pyrite-quartz-calcite alteration assemblage and a peripheral pyrite-carbonate alteration halo. Au-Ag-Zn-Pb sulfide replacements (mantos) occur in the underlying limestone units, beneath the planned open pits and above the source of cross-cutting porphyry dikes.
Exploration continues in the vicinity of the Peñasquito mine, including expansion of high-grade manto deposits beneath the Peñasquito pit, definition of leachable oxide resources at Noche Buena, and advanced exploration of the Camino Rojo project, which includes the Represa deposit.
Peñasquito lies within a wide valley, bounded to the north by the Sierra El Mascaron and to the south by the Sierra Las Bocas. Except for one small outcrop, the area is covered by up to 30 m of alluvium. The terrain is generally flat, with rolling hills. Vegetation is mostly scrub, with cactus and coarse grasses. The prevailing elevation of the Peñasquito property is approximately 1,900 m above sea level. The climate is generally dry with precipitation being limited, for the most part, to a rainy season of June and July. Temperatures range between 20°C and 30°C in the summer and 0°C and 15°C in the winter.
Mr. Olson is the Senior Vice President, Project Development. Prior to that he served as VP, Project Development and prior to that as the VP, COO, Luismin, Mexico from May 2007 to October 2008. From August 2006 until the completion of the Glamis Gold acquisition, Mr. Olson was VP, Director, Mexican Operations of Glamis. Prior to joining Glamis, from 2001 to August 2006, Mr. Olson was VP, General Manager for Coeur d’Alene Mines Corp. at its Rochester mine and SVP, Operations for mines in Chile and Argentina. Mr. Olson spent 10 years with Amax Gold as VP and General Manager at operations in Nevada, California, and Chile. Mr. Olson has over 23 years in the mining industry in North and South America. He has a BS in Metallurgical Engineering and a MS in Mining Engineering, both from the University of Idaho.
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Dr. Jose A. Botin
Henry Krumb Lecturer |
A Methodological Model to Assist on the Optimization and Risk Management of Mining Investment Decisions
Identifying, quantifying and minimizing technical risks associated to investment decisions is a key challenge for the minerals industry decision takers and investors. However, risk analysis in most bankable mine feasibility studies are based on stochastic modelling of project NPV which, in most cases, fail to provide decision makers with a truly comprehensive analysis of risks associated to technical and management uncertainty and, as the result, are of little use for risk management and project optimization. Botin presents a new value-chain risk management approach where project risk is evaluated for each step of the project lifecycle, from exploration to mine closure, and risk management is performed as part of a stepwise value added optimization process.
Dr. Jose Botin is Professor and Chairman of the Mining Engineering Department at Universidad Catolica de Chile. He has devoted his 40 years career to the minerals industry in operations and in Academia. He worked as mine planning engineer with Placer, Canada; Mine Manager for Fosbucraa Mining in Western Sahara; General Manager, Mining for Rio Tinto in Spain; Chief Operating Officer for Cominco and Chief Executive Officer for Anglo American in Spain. Since 2000 until 2011, he worked as professor and Chair of the Mining Engineering Department at Universidad Politecnica de Madrid. Also in 2006 to 2009 he was visiting professor at Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Botin holds the Engineer of Mines and PhD (Mining) degrees from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid; MSc (Mining) from Colorado School of Mines and a MBA from Universidad de Navarra, IESE Business School.
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