Yamana Today Announced Its Operating Outlook For 2005

• Published in: Business Wire p. 1
• Format: Newsletter
• Language: English
• Published: New York Business Wire 06.01.2005
• Subjects: American dollar; Capital costs; Construction; Copper; Estimates; Feasibility studies; Foreign exchange rates; Gold; Investigations; Mineralization; Mines; Mining; Quartz; TORONTO

Yamana holds over 700,000 hectares of mineral concessions and mining rights on the Santa Elina Gold Belt. The exploration program for this year is budgeted at $4.6 million, including the northern and central part of the gold belt, investigation of the deeper zone at the Sao Vicente mine, and increases in Sao Francisco reserves. An 850-meter long drift is being excavated to investigate a high- grade deep zone to the south of the old Sao Vicente pit and will be followed by bulk sampling and underground drilling. The regional program for the gold belt so far has focused on exploration of the areas between Sao Francisco and Sao Vicente. The highest priority target is Longa Vida just 800 meters from Sao Francisco mine. Longa Vida is a 2-kilometer target, containing over a 1-kilometer long zone with coarse gold-bearing quartz veins in the eastern limb of Sao Francisco anticline. Two chip sample programs were performed followed by detailed geological mapping. The first chip sample program returned values up to 600 g/t and highlighted several veins with visible gold. The second program, taking 182 larger chip samples and submitted to screen-fire assay, confirmed positive results over 1.25-kilometer of quartz veins, including 4.82 g/t, 9.7 g/t and 46 g/t. The follow up program at Longa Vida will consist of trenching for bulk sampling to better define the gold grades and diamond drilling to investigate extensions of mineralization to depth. Finally, in fill drilling is planned at Sao Francisco to upgrade resources into reserves. Gold production from Sao Vicente has not been included in the above table as it is subject to completion of an update to a feasibility study which is expected in February, and to a favorable construction decision by the board of Yamana. Sao Vicente is approximately 50 km from Sao Francisco and Yamana's original mine plan was to develop the two projects on a combined basis sharing infrastructure, equipment, mine fleet and personnel. Exploration at Sao Vicente now suggests that a re-evaluation of the reserve estimate at Sao Vicente should be undertaken. At a higher reserve estimate, Sao Vicente could support a stand-alone mine plan with more years of production than originally contemplated. However, this will not be known until a new reserve estimate compliant with 43-101 and the updated feasibility study are completed. Under the current mine plan for Sao Vicente, treating it on a combined basis with Sao Francisco with its operations beginning in 2006, total gold production is expected to exceed 300,000 ounces in 2006 and 410,000 ounces in 2007. There is also considerable exploration potential at Sao Vicente which will be evaluated as part of the proposed update. Further guidance will be provided once the Sao Vicente feasibility study update is completed.