Pacific Rim-focused Metals Exploration has produced a bullish ‘concept study’ of its Runruno gold and molybdenum project in the Philippines.

The AIM-quoted company’s study envisages annual production of between 190,000 oz and 210,000 oz of gold from Runruno. It anticipates a cash cost (before finance and capital costs) of US400 an ounce, against today’s gold price of nearly $930 an ounce, but says sales of a possible 1.8-to-2.1 million lbs a year of molybdenum by-product could effectively cut this cost to between $190 and $320 per ounce of gold.

London-based Metals Ex, which has appointed Australian engineering and project management specialist Ausenco to complete a specialist technical ‘scoping’ study of Runruno, estimates the capital cost of the project will come out at between $160 million (£80 million) and $210 million. Chief executive officer Jonathan Beardsworth proclaims, ‘We already know we have 2.1 million oz of gold at Runruno, of which 775,000 oz are in the JORC-indicated [least speculative] category’ — a key mining industry standard yardstick — at modest grades of  around 2.4 grammes of gold per tonne of ore.

Shares in volatile Metals Ex soared from 8.5p to 47.25p between June 2005 and May 2006, but have faltered since then. At 23.75p, up 1.25p today, they value the company at £22 million and their appeal is speculative.

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Metals Exploration	AIM	£8.56m	7.62p	0.00p
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Other company articles:
Brickbats for Metals Ex			02/10/2008
Project cheer from Metals Ex			15/04/2008
Exploration Insights by Robert Tyerman			29/10/2007
Pace quickens at Metals Ex			10/10/2007
Metals Exploration			28/08/2007