Aussie-RI JV wins Martabe gold project: Offcial

Australian mining firm Agincourt Resources Ltd and its Indonesian partner Dharmawangsa Group have won the tender to buy the Martabe gold project owned by American firm Newmont in North Sumatra.

A senior official at the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources who wanted to remain anonymous confirmed on Thursday that the Australian and Indonesian joint venture had beat out a consortium comprising Indonesian state-owned firm PT Aneka Tambang, a Malaysian and South African firms in the tender for the gold project that Newmont wants to spin off.

?One of the reasons to select the Australian and Indonesian joint venture is that the Indonesian portion of ownership in the joint venture is larger than the ownership of Indonesian investor in the other joint venture,? the official said.

Dharmawangsa Group has a 45 percent stake in the joint venture with Agincourt. Meanwhile, Aneka Tambang has only 25 percent of the joint venture, which is 25 percent owned by the Malaysian company and 50 percent by the South African company.

Quoting a source at Agincourt, Dow Jones reported on Thursday that Perth-based Agincourt buys the gold project at US$80 million.

A Newmont official has indicated that the Martabe project has potential reserves of 3 million ounces of gold disseminated over several deposits. The amount is however too small for a giant gold producer such as Newmont which has among others a huge copper and gold mine in West Nusa Tenggara . (Godang)