Transcription of SPIA Tour
To Molejón Project.
September 5 2010
Engineer Lazaro Rodriguez:
The project itself is based on the extraction of a gold deposit being mined in the shape of an opened tasco , the way it works is that an exploration phase is developed at the beginning of the project, this exploration phase , done through drilling, allows to determine the amount of gold from the mineral concentrated in a physical space of rock.
What does our plan in the mine say? What and based on what are working for: on the basis of extracting 2,500 tons per day for an average grade of 2.6 to 3 grams per ton to obtain 6.000 ounces per month.
Engineer Djurdjica Kuntich:
A ton in weight in metric volume. I’m talking about a removable rock has one cubic meter in weight approximately.
Engineer Lazaro Rodriguez:
Weight is relative in this material because the factor is roughly 1.8 to 2.4, the factor varies because obviously we pick three representative types of rock: one is a Sabrosita which is mostly clay, the other is a indecita rock which is very consistent, and the other is the quartz gap where the gold is concentrated more easily, that´s why each mineral has different densities.
Engineer Lazaro:
Petaquilla Gold, SA
The important thing here is that the process efficiency has been determined before this phase, based on extraction. When I got here I pulled out my efficiency point from 93 to 97 percent.
Everything I return from my tailings that are re-circulating here I am going to be able to say that goes into efficiency.
Engineer CIEMI:
When you came out I was then explaining that at that point it goes back to the circuit again but the time it takes to run out is an efficiency but an efficiency of extraction; in other words as soon as you recover the product that you did in the extracting cycle at the point that you call solution and that is going to depend on if the first cycle began and ended there, that’s where the efficiency appears.
Engineer Lazaro:
It start with 200 or 300 cyanide acts and it disappears along the way.
Engineer CIEMI: it starts with a lot of strength.
Engineer SPIA, Clarifying the issue, indeed the explanation began by saying that the priority of efficiency is economic efficiency with the operation of the plant which I think is fantastic. They even suggest the re-usage of solutions in order to avoid storage substance accumulation and maintain levels of profitability. Personally I do not understand that you stated that the average daily extraction is of 30 pounds of gold that comes to 600 a month, using 500 kilos of cyanide in the process, why do you require and additional 500 if what is being used works with the flow.
I just told you to use two specific solutions to avoid the effect of the reaction of the forming of cyanide because I am of the understanding that cyanide has some effects on the environment.
Engineer Lazaro
If cyanide, that has an interesting feature, a fast reagent, is destroyed by the water with ultraviolet rays, with bacterial agents, with the environment; which means that it is lost, it dissolves then lost on the way, then everything that I can recover from cyanide means savings for the new addition.
Eng. CIEMI, right
Engineer Lazaro,
Now how to handle it: that’s why I mentioned the detoxification of cyanide, the amount of PP of the cyanide with which we should begin should be of 250 going out, from there on it should be below zero, below one PP and below one part.
Engineer CIEMI; that is the expectation, after a solution
Engineer Lazaro
And that is what goes into the Tailing basin. The tailing basin is an environmental management system OK. So, if water where to come out from here, I would not need a tailing basin.
A detoxification substance comes at less than one part per million that should have a natural detoxification process in that basin.
Engineer Djurdjica Kuntich:
Are these basins open or closed, or the tanks?
Engineer Lazaro:
Are they open, are those liquid?
Engineer Djurdjica Kuntich;
So there’s people here watching the process
Engineer Lazaro:
These are open and they are interns.
Engineer Djurdjica Kuntich;
OK.
Engineer Lazaro:
OK. We will now enter the tailing basin and I will explain it very quickly, we already have coal that has not been absorbed and is still in the process of separating the gold from that coal.
Why is gold separated from coal? It is separated using electric power, temperature and reagents that would be the new cyanide here. And we separate the gold particles from the coal; the particles are stored in an electrolytic cell, once we obtain these cells, they are washed, dried, melted and we get our results, this is what is worked on.
We will go into our tailing basin; how does the tailing basin work?
A. The tailing basin is a natural construction. It is indeed a pit or land where the soil is compacted, the compacted soil is covered with a plastic clay layer, characteristics of our soils are neutralized; a mesh is placed over the clay achieving a buffer and a Lainer H which is welded boron is poured there and this result is achieved by the process of the whole plant and process of being isolated from the environment. This tailing is isolated, hosts this pulp that naturally emerges and that ends in a compact clay land fill that can be reused. For instance, Nicaragua is one of the best examples of having made a garden on top of tailings.
We have a project to use this clay, a project called
Peta-Arcillas to generate: Gates, clay materials etc. ..
Then all the pulp is stored in the environment insulated container and all the water that is surfacing to the site is reused, then the way it works is that we are going to get a piece, we will pass it through the plant and we will place it on another piece of land where we will isolate it from the environment, that’s how the management of tailings generated by the plant work, the liquid is reused in the process and while being reused they are equally stored in the basins.
Engineer Romulo Rodriguez:
That’s regarding the exterior. What about the interior, what is below the filtrations.
Engineer Lazaro
Well , the tailing
Engineer Romulo Rodriguez
Well there you have the tailing, you placed the mesh and it’s solid, you picked up it’s solid, you located, and everything else. The filtration is downward.
Engineer Lazaro
There is no filtering, it is insulated with a layer of high density polyethylene, is isolated from the environment or the subsoil
Engineer CIEMI
The question that could be asked is would there be a second basin if needed? That is concerning.
Engineer Lazaro:
It is management, just as the bic has areas and phases and progresses according to plan, creating blocks and generating this volume passing through the plant and we store this volume in the same sequence of the mining which is growing and it’s level is descending and raising going east. It is the same sequence of extraction and construction.
Engineer Romulo Rodriguez:
Now you have the study that shows the toxicity level that recycled waste products have.
Engineer Lazaro
When we talk of waste products, there is something important to say. My waste goes to my waste container, I produce less than a ppm, at this moment the basin could have between 5 and 10 ppm.
Once there was a newspaper, I believe it was La Prensa that published: Is there cyanide in the rivers of Molejon? I there is as in Chagres, in Tmesis, and in Da nubio because cyanide has its natural presence; but now that how much you need to know 0,0001 milligrams per liter, 0,0005 milligrams per liters. Copanic’s regulations establish that for the industrial affluent the maximum discharge must be 0,2 milligrams per liters; then first you should know the regulations, second you should understand the parameters and third you have to compare against the analysis and not say lightly that the river is polluted. Because it’s like thinking that someone that is not a doctor, took a look at you and told you that your are diabetic without ordering a blood test, or your suffer with high blood pressure without taking your pressure. Even when this type of experts is abundant, through radio and television they give prescriptions and do this type of things.
We maintain a process of high security levels in matters of work prevention management, occupational health and environmental security; we have a process, in which we re-circulate the sodium cyanide. Once the lixiviation ends and we use it again. Then when the use of this cyanide has finished that you can also see around there, I believe it’s on La Cascara, they are sending every one that has friends on La Cascara’s Facebook telling them; the same thing that a few months ago CIAM was saying that they had a billboard for a year next to the social security, in front of 99 supermarket and one in David Chiriquí where they said that we consume about 6 cubic millions of water. Do you have an idea of how much is 6 cubic millions of water. We consume 45 cubic meters hour, 1,080 per day, this is, 133,000 times less than what they are saying; 6 millions of cubic meters of water are four times what all the Chilean industries consume. This is, Petaquilla Gold with its itsy bitsy Project consumes according to them four times what all the mining industries in Chile consume. A mining country par excellence.
They say that we process 153,000 tons a day of this mineral.
We process 2,200 tons, this is 71 comma five times less. This means that instead of three ball mills we should have 214 or 220 ball mills.
Instead of 6 tanks of lixiviation we should have 440 tanks of lixiviation.
So, all this should be known, it is studied; is not standing at the corner and 15 minutes later I can talk about the topic, unfortunately those who have had Access to the media are those that carry imprecise information either because of ignorance or because of wickedness. Either one, should be corrected. They say that we generate 11 thousand tons of solid waste a day, tell me where can you hide 11 thousand tons of solid waste, toxic waste where are we going to hide it , where can you do that, here with Panama and San Miguelito’s garbage when it is not picked up it is visible and stinks.
So when you go to the Project area, you see that all the communities near-by, people raise they livestock, people raise their pigs, chickens, fishes, dogs, they have their horses, the children bathe in the rivers. There is a normal life. We don’t discharge the products that we use in the plant process in water sources these are re-circulated in closed circuit process highly secure.
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