The American company “Freeport Mc Moran” found in Bor a deposit with 12 percent of the copper in the ore. There are even drills with an incredible 20 percent of the metal. Now they are digging up the ore that has 0.4 percent.
After the American company “Freeport Mc Moran” found a new copper deposit in the vicinity of the Bor airport, the future of mining in the region is no longer in question. The Americans, based on two drills, under a layer of sediment, went straight into a massive copper deposit, in which the metal content varies, on average – from 10 to 12 percent, while there are parts where the copper content reaches a whopping 20 percent in the ore.
Currently ore with copper content up 0.4 percent is being dug out in Bor and Majdanpek mines but the data show that the deposits of red metal with 1 percent in the ore are profitable.
Although initial results show that Americans got “bingo”, and that the quality of the ore they found is almost identical to those that Serbian industrialist George Weifert found in 1902, only future research, which may take several years will whether this percentage of copper is followed by appropriate amounts of ore, which would guarantee the opening and exploitation of a new copper mine.
What is certain for now, is the fact that the zone of Timok Magmatic Complex, as in geological terms, is this area named, has the biggest mining potential in Serbia. Thus, recently, the Canadian company “Avala risoris” at the site Bigar Hill, in Crni Vrh Mountain near Bor, framed a deposit with 38 million tons of ore, from which it is possible to extract 48 tons of gold.
Canadians have completed the research Kraku pester site too, where they made 16,000 meters of drilling. The next step is to calculate the balance of gold in that area, which, based on the results of drilling, will be done by a consulting company AMC, from the UK.
– This is another positive step toward our goal – to turn the discoveries we got in the research into a profitable project – said Justin van der Torn, research director in “Avala”. – Bearing in mind that we are a research company, our goal is to discover mineral resources and define them in terms of economic potential, for potential ore exploitation.
On the other hand, geologists from mine “Bor” are not sitting idly too. They have, over the past two years, completed 42 kilometers of drilling at the site Kriveljski stone, and discovered a deposit of 50 million tons of copper and gold ore.
– Based on current knowledge, we can talk about the reserves of 50 million tons of ore from which you can reach 30 million tons through a classic surface mine – said Trajče Tončić, head of the Department of Geology at “Bor”.
– As the project is only half way implemented, we can expect at least the same amount of ore. The medium copper content in the ore is slightly above the 0.3 percent and about 0.1 gram of gold per ton, but the precious metal is very unevenly distributed. Specifically, in some drills on the periphery of the reservoir, where there were no copper, gold went from 10 to 30 grams per ton of ore at intervals of three to five meters. Since in terms of gold we can obviously expect surprises, we will try to research in the future and resolve all doubts.
Source Serbia Energy Magazine