Ivanhoe Mines signs earn-in agreement with BHP for Turquoise Hill copper/gold prospect in Mongolia

SINGAPORE, May 8 /CNW/ - Robert M. Friedland, Chairman of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., is pleased to announce that the company has signed an agreement with The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP), which gives Ivanhoe the right to earn a 100% interest in the Turquoise Hill (Oyu Tolgoi) copper/gold d...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inCanada NewsWire p. 1
Format Newsletter
LanguageEnglish
Published Ottawa PR Newswire Association LLC 08.05.2000
Subjects
Copper
Expenditures
Mineralization
Mines
Stock exchanges
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Summary:SINGAPORE, May 8 /CNW/ - Robert M. Friedland, Chairman of Ivanhoe Mines Ltd., is pleased to announce that the company has signed an agreement with The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP), which gives Ivanhoe the right to earn a 100% interest in the Turquoise Hill (Oyu Tolgoi) copper/gold discovery in the South Gobi area of Mongolia. Ivanhoe's earn-in rights are subject to BHP's limited back-in rights. BHP, based in Melbourne, Australia, is one of the world's largest resources companies. BHP spent approximately US$2 million from 1996 to 1998 on exploration at the Turquoise Hill property. The work included detailed geophysical, geochemical and geological mapping, as well as drilling 23 widely-spaced diamond holes within a five-square- kilometre area. Present indications are that the prospect contains copper and gold mineralization in three main zones, identified as Central Oyu, South Oyu and North Oyu. Douglas Kirwin, Ivanhoe Mines' Senior Vice-President, Exploration, believes there is excellent potential for the discovery of additional zones of both primary copper/gold and secondary copper mineralization. Mr. Friedland said that Ivanhoe's initial exploration program at Turquoise Hill will consist of 4,000 metres of reverse circulation drilling to test the oxide copper potential, beginning this month. The program will focus on three principal objectives that can be readily assessed by drilling. They are 1) the project's potential to host a large, long-life secondary copper deposit amendable to open pit mining and the low-cost, high-efficiency SX-EW recovery process that Ivanhoe has successfully established at its 50%-owned Monywa Copper Project in Myanmar; 2) bulk mineable, heap-leachable gold resources in the leached cap zones; and 3) primary copper and gold mineralization associated with porphyry systems.