IPO-bound OceanaGold to explore another Didipio

Australian-Canadian firm OceanaGold Corp. is spending $2 million this year to kick start its exploration program and find “another” Didipio mine as part of its expansion program.

OceanaGold president and CEO Gerard Bond said as much as $7 million has been allocated for drill operations this year.

Of the total, around $3 million to $5 million will be used to sustain drilling at the Didipio mine site.

Bond said $2 million of the budget would be used to begin drilling explorations at Napartan, an area about nine kilometers away from Didipio mine but is still within OceanaGold’s Financial or Technical Assistance Agreement area.

The mining firm recently signed an agreement with local landowners and the barangay in Napartan, Nueva Vizcaya to commence drilling operations.

“We hope to have the drills active in about a month. We think there could be gold there,” he said in a recent press briefing.

“We hope to find another Didipio mine,” he added.

Based on Didipio mine’s latest technical report, the firm’s exploration at the Napartan prospect has “produced encouraging results.”

According to the report, initial analysis of the area revealed the presence of pegmatitic dykes with similar composition with the Balut dykes at Didipio.

The testing of the muck sample from the Napartan prospect yielded greater than two percent copper and more than one gram per metric ton of gold content, the report added.

Bond is “confident” that Didipio mine will exceed again its production guidance for this year owing to the site’s “great” ore body.

The mine is expected to produce between 120,000 ounces and 135,000 ounces of gold and 12,000 to 14,000 metric tons of copper this year.

In 2023, Didipio surpassed its production guidance for both gold and copper output after producing 138,500 ounces of gold and 14,200 MT of copper.

“This is an ore body that has two sources of feed: underground and open pit stockpiles. If we get disrupted underground, we just go to the stockpile,” he said.

“If we can produce more from underground, we tend to exceed our production guidance,” he added, noting that underground gold ore has four times the gold grade of the stockpile.

Didipio mine’s annual mill throughput is about four million MT with 1.7 million to 1.8 million MT coming from the underground while the remaining volume is from the stockpile, Bond said.