Known Resources
- Why is so much gold remaining in the Victorian Deep Leads?
- What order of entry might SORD Co undertake?
- Why is much of Canadian Athabasca oil inaccessible?
- How could SORD Co mine these resources?
Why is so much gold remaining in the Victorian Deep Leads?
The upper tributaries and shallow Victorian Deep Leads were mined extensively in the late 1800's when 6.5 million ounces of gold was reported as mined. The Deep Leads have been extensively drilled and various sources estimate the gold in ground to be in the region of 20 to 80 million ounces.
The gold sits in a strata of between 0.5 - 3m width but at a depth of up to 100 metres. Traditional open cut and dredging would not be economically viable due to the overburden ratio. Dewatering and shaft mining is dangerous, uneconomic and environmentally undesirable. Freezing and shaft mining is also economically untenable. Solution mining of the gold bearing strata using cyanide or other chemicals is environmentally unacceptable and economically and practically unproven. Therefore, the gold remains in the ground until an economic and environmentally acceptable way can be found to extract it, such as SORDMiner.
What order of entry might SORD Co undertake?
It is expected that the SORDMiner will first be deployed and proven in the mineral sands industry. Following this, the Company will view opportunities considering not just the resources in ground, but the strength of the joint venture mining and/or processing partners to be involved.
Why is much of Canadian Athabasca oil inaccessible?
Currently the Athabasca reserves are 176.1 billion barrels, but only 23-30% of the total resource (354 billion barrels) (Ref: Alberta Energy and Utilities Board) is considered to be recoverable with current technology (open pit mining and various hot water injection well techniques). The reason for such a low recovery estimate for this large reserve is due to the fact that much of the reserve is too deep to mine by open pit methods and drill hole extraction technologies are currently inefficient and expensive.
How could SORD Co mine these resources?
Currently oil sands are mined using traditional open pit mining methods where the soft ‘ore' is excavated using shovels and transported to a central pit area. The oil sand is then mixed with hot water and transported to the refinery using slurry pumps and pipelines. SORDMiner would literally take the surface slurry pumps of the current mines underground to the ore face, slurry the ore using hot water in this soft collapsing environment and transport the oil sand directly to the refinery on the surface using its on board slurry pumps. It is envisaged that production rates from specifically designed SORDMiners would be around 10,000 tonnes per hour.