Donlin Creek god project feasibility: permitting process next step to anticipated 2015 start-up.

• Author: Liles, Patricia
• Position: MINING

After 15 years of exploration at the remote Donlin Creek gold project in southwest Alaska, property owners have put together an open-pit, hard-rock mine proposal backed by a feasibility study indicating low cash costs to produce more than a million ounces of gold annually, while providing up to 800 year-round jobs.

Estimated to contain more than 31 million ounces of gold, Donlin Creek is located on Native-owned lands in the Calista region and is being developed by NovaGold Resources and Barrick Gold.

PERMITTING PROCESS NEXT

Now, the next step for Donlin Creek is a formal start of the permitting process with the submission of applications to State and federal regulatory authorities by the mine project owners, NovaGold and Barrick.

Preparing for that permitting process has made up the bulk of work this year by staff and contractors working for Donlin Creek LLC, the subsidiary wholly owned by Barrick and NovaGold that is charged with advancing the gold project.

"We've got the permit documents just about in final form and ready to go," said Doug Nicholson, president and general manager of Donlin Creek LLC. "We're waiting for a decision to pull the trigger, to go ahead and submit documents."

That formal submission is not likely to start before the end of 2009, he said during a mid-September interview, a push back from previously announced plans to start the permitting process this year.

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"We had set a goal to be ready to submit documents in May, but still at the same time, we performed the feasibility study update that was not finished until the first of March. Things were still fluid and there just wasn't enough time in there," Nicholson said. "At the same time, we were out doing meetings in the villages. We wanted time to take those comments and see how they play against what the project description was, and to try to incorporate what we were hearing out there."

PUBLIC MEETINGS HELD

Beginning last December, Donlin Creek's management team and some consultants traveled throughout the southwestern Alaska region, taking the recently-released project description to residents who would be most impacted by development of a gold mine.

More than a dozen such public meetings and open houses were held in villages throughout the middle Kuskokwim River region near where Donlin Creek is located.

The meetings, which are not required by the public permitting process, were held to inform locals about current development plans and to take...