THE resumption of drilling at the Meyas Sands gold deposit in Sudan was a “positive step” for the prospect, said Jeff Quartermaine, CEO of Perseus Mining.
The Australian miner started exploring in Sudan in 2023 after buying Orca Mining for A$230m. Soon after, hostilities broke out in the northeastern country bringing exploration at the site to a halt.
Perseus said on Monday however that it had re-established facilities at Meyas Gold supporting on-site exploration and in-house security teams. Meyas Sands is located about 1,000km north of Khartoum where the military confrontation is taking place.
Said Quartermaine today: “The outbreak of hostilities in the south and west of Sudan in 2023 represented a serious setback for Perseus’s ambitions for MSGP (Meyas Sands), but the recent recommencement of drilling activities is considered a positive step forward that hopefully will lead to the development of MSGP when peace is finally restored throughout the country”.
The project’s Block 14 is scoped to produce 228,000 ounces of gold a year for the first seven years of a 13.5 life of mine.
In April, Bloomberg News cited Quartermaine as saying Meyas Sands was “not lost to our company by any stretch of the imagination”.
Perseus is on an aggressive growth strategy. It recently concluded the A$258m takeover of Nyanzaga Gold Project in Tanzania which has reported probable ore reserves of some 40.08 million tons grading at 2.02 grams per tons for 2.60 million ounces of gold.
