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Augustus, through its purchase of ACM Contract Mining PNG has also applied for an EL application covering the massive Mt Kare gold project.
Mt Kare sits about 600kms north-west of Port Moresby and has been the subject of a legal bunfight in recent years.
Back in 2015, ASX-listed Indochine had control of Mt Kare and had reputedly spent some $125m at the site, with many sitting up and taking notice when it revealed a resource about that time of 42.5m tonnes going 1.54 g/t gold and 13.5 g/t silver for a whopping 2.11m ounces of gold and 18.4m ounces of silver.
There is no evidence pointing to any of those ounces having been mined to this day.
Indochine subsequently ran into financial trouble and lost several court battles to retain the Mt Kare leases and there has been a flood of mining hopefuls trying to obtain the prized ground ever since.
The PNG Government’s Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) has been working its way through the interested parties, looking for a suitable company with both the money and mining expertise to take the project to the next level.
The MRA deals with each application in the order in which it was lodged and has already waved off the first party in line.
The next company hoping to step up to the plate and prove its credentials is a private company by the name of Tribune Mt Kare Gold Ltd, with Augustus next in the queue.
Augustus has the option to either attempt to negotiate with the party ahead of it, or perhaps lodge an objection based on it having the superior knowledge and financial firepower to make really big things happen at Mt Kare.
Geologically, Mt Kare is an Alkalic Epithermal deposit. Similar to the Vanapa River mineralisation, alkalic type deposits are a subset of low-sulphidation epithermal deposits and form some of the largest deposits globally.
Drilling at Mt Kare has thrown up several astonishing drill hits such as a 111m stretch at 9.8g/t gold from just 4m and 17.7m going 100 g/t gold from 59m. A further result delivered a stunning 20m at 443g/t gold.
PNG has always been elephant country when it comes to mineral deposits but has in the past been difficult to deal with from a regulatory perspective albeit it is now showing signs that it is open for business.
And one thing seems certain, Augustus executives are spending a lot of time in PNG, navigating their way through that regulatory framework and when PNG does in fact open for business, Augustus will be standing at the counter – and very close to the front of the line.
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