Laminco and Placer Dome form joint venture in Mexico

A joint venture has been formed allowing the Mexican subsidiary of Placer Dome (PDG-T) to buy a majority interest in a portion of the San Antonio project, held by Laminco Resources (LMR-T).

Empresa Minera Can Mex will pay Laminco US$600,000 and, over a 2-year period, must spend at least $2 million exploring the deposit, situated in Sonora state.

Placer will also pay Laminco US$800,000 and US$1.6 million at the end of the first and second years, respectively. Once the obligations are fulfilled and its option exercised, Placer will earn a 70% interest in a western portion of the project area. The largely unexplored portion excludes all known reserves and resources.

Exploration will focus on proving up the project’s open-pit mining and heap-leach potential, as well as underground gold prospects.

Other priorities include developing an open-pit operation at the Luz del Cobre copper deposit, which has reserves of 14.6 million tonnes grading 0.738% copper.

“We’re going to make a production decision on the copper project before mid-1997,” says Laminco spokesman Peter Maynes. “But first, we need to do additional development work on the potential heap-leach operation at San Antonio.”