HIDDEN VALLEY GROUP GOLD DEPOSITS AND MINERAL RESOURCES
The Hidden Valley project comprises three main deposits being mined concurrently – the Hamata, Hidden Valley and Kaveroi deposits. As shown in Table 3, in 2013 these deposits still contained 117.9 Mt of ore grading ~1.5 g/t gold and ~27 g/t silver, and containing 174,400 and 3,169,000 kilograms of gold and silver, respectively (or about 5.61 and 102 million ounces of gold and silver, respectively).
There are also a variety of other prospects and gold deposits in the Morobe region. The Kerimenge-Lemenge deposit, discovered in 1983, was reported to contain 55 Mt at 1.0 g/t gold for 55,000 kilograms of gold (1.78 million ounces), but the ore is refractory leading to low gold recoveries and therefore remains uneconomic (Hutton et al., 1990; Denwer 1997). The Kerimenge-Lemenge deposit is presently part of the Morobe Exploration Joint Venture, with all exploration leases owned by the MMJV. In addition to the activities of the MMJV, there are additional companies conducting mineral exploration in the Morobe Province.
Figure 8: Morobe Mining Joint Venture exploration and mining licences (Palaulo, 2012).