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· Phu Bia gold-copper deposit
situated some 90 kilometres north-east of Vientiane. The deposit consist of three
ore-zones with a total of 28.6 Mt of ore with an average grade of 1.1 g/t
gold, which is equivalent to 1,023,000 oz of gold. Normandy-Newmont mining
companies have conducted exploration and drilling in 1994 to 1998. Panaustralia Resources LTD. has been
producing gold from this deposite since end of 2005. It is conducting
feasibility study for bringing copper into production by end 2005.
· Sepon mine owned by Oxiana
limited located in the Savannakhet area Southern Lao PDR went into production
with a gold mine in January 2003 and a copper mine in March 2005. The
gold-bearing orebodies at Sepon contain 14 million tonnes of ore with 1.5
million oz of gold and 2.6 million. oz of silver. Sepon has furthermore 15.5
mio tonne of proven and probably ore with an average grade of 5.2 percent Cu.
· Sanakham gold-copper deposit
located west of Vientiane.
Extensive but low-grade mineralisation was found through a detailed airborne
geophysical work and 4900 linear meters of diamond drilling. Daolao Company
Limited is currently conducting exploration. Gold occurences in loa PDR are
widely distributed in three fold belts:the sukhothai fold belt, and the indochinese
fold belt. several gold potential occurrences are under exploration ( in
Viengtiane capital,Bolikhamxay province,Louangphrabang province,etc..)
· Sapphire of good quality has
recently been mined in Houei Say area in North-West Laos. In 1999, 6,600,000
carats were produced, though in 2000 production fell to 189,284 carats due to
financial problems of the mining company. The sapphires were heat treated,
cut and polished in Laos.
However information on the value of the sapphire production is not available.
It is unlikely that this sapphire deposit is exhausted and there is potential
to develop this sapphire mine in the future. In southern Lao PDR the geology
may also be highly favourable to sapphire deposits.
· Tonghap potash deposit has been
indicated in the Vientiane
area. There has been some drilling and preliminary mapping indicating up to
50 billion tonnes of potash. Just across the border in a very similar
geological environment is the Udon Thani Potash project for which Asia
Pacific Potash is conducting a feasibility study. The Thai project is
estimated to employ 900 people in the mine and another 5000 jobs in
subsidiary industries. The Thai mine calculate earning of the 22 years mine
life in the order of US $4.3 billion.
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