Denver-based junior Gabriel Resources (GBU-V) has signed a joint-Venture agreement with the Romanian state-owned mining company Regia Autonoma a Cuprului Deva.
The partners are establishing a Romanian joint-Venture company named Euro Gold Resources, in which ownership will be divided among Gabriel (65%), Regia Deva (33.8%) and others (1.2%). Under the deal, Gabriel can increase its stake to 80%.
The agreement relates to gold exploration and mining in Transylvania’s 2,000-year-old “Golden Quadrilateral” mining district, which is defined by the towns of Brad, Baia de Aries, Zlatna and Sacarimb in northwestern Romania.
In fact, the purpose of the Roman conquest of Dacia in 105 A.D., the event to which the Romanian people trace their origins, was to secure the region’s gold deposits.
The 500-sq.-km district, which currently produces about 140,000 oz. gold annually, contains epithermal to mesothermal gold deposits associated with Badenian-Pliocene andesitic-dacitic (named after Dacia) volcanics and sub-Volcanics intruding into stockworks, breccia pipes and vein swarms.
The district also contains several porphyry copper-gold deposits.
The chief assets covered by the Gabriel-Regia Deva agreement are the open-pit Rosia Montana gold mine and the underground Brad gold mine, both of which are currently operating under substantial government subsidies.
Gabriel is also negotiating a separate joint-Venture agreement with the Romanian state exploration company Minexfor regarding potential gold deposits at Bucium-Corabia.
Gabriel is studying the feasibility of redeveloping the Rosia Montana mine, which currently produces 10,000 to 12,000 oz. gold annually, and exploiting the tailings dumps at both Rosia Montana and Brad. The company is also planning to explore the Bucium intrusive complex for gold and gold-Copper porphyry deposits.
The Romanian government is in the midst of enacting a new mining law, to be put into effect by the end of June, which will establish a legal framework for the granting of exploration and mining concessions.
The government is also creating a new regulatory body, the National Agency for Mineral Resources, which will grant exploration concessions.
“Romania has opened not just its doors to western investment, but also its windows,” said Romanian Secretary of State for Mines Nicolae Staiculescu at a recent Gabriel-hosted press conference in Toronto. “But we don’t want free help,” he stressed, “and we only ask for what we don’t have — money and technology.”
Staiculescu joked, “In 1976 in Montreal, a Romanian named Nadia Comenici came to Canada to find gold, so it is only fitting that now, more than 20 years later, it is Canadians who are coming to Romania in search of gold.”
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