AUSTRALIAN gold miners, Ausjam Limited, closed down its operation at Pennants, over a year ago with no clear indication of when it will reopen, but government officials are still hopeful for the future of gold mining in Jamaica.

“We hope that we will find another gold mine. We still have people looking around, doing exploration. The exploration worldwide is not as intense as in the past but will pick up because the price of gold is now over US$500 an ounce,” noted Coy Roache, commissioner of mines and geology.

“The price has increased so you will find that people will start to look again. We hope to attract some investment in that area.”

In the meantime, Roache is hoping that the sole operation now mining in the Clarendon area, having been granted an exploration permit last year, will hit pay dirt soon.

Ausjam shut down its two-year-old operations, after the mine was exhausted, with a disappointing yield of just over 16,000 ounces of gold from which the Jamaican government earned a little over $7 million, or 4.25 per cent in royalty.

The 16,000 ounces of gold accounted for somewhere in the region of 40,000 tonnes of ore, a far cry from the early projections for an estimated 100,000 tonnes of ore and 35,000 ounces of nine to 15 karat gold. Ausjam had pumped US$7.5 million into the Pennants gold mine.

Despite its relatively brief operation, however, Ausjam frequently made the news because of industrial disputes with its workers, once over redundancy payments and complaints from community residents that Ausjam enjoyed public amenities that they could not access.

At its lowest point, the company’s name figured largely in the just concluded Crawle murder case, in which the Reneto Adams-led Crime Management Unit said it had gone to the sleepy Clarendon district to hunt down an alleged extortionist feeding off the mine.

Four persons were killed in the police operation, for which Adams and five of his men were tried and acquitted.

Ausjam was the latest in a long line of firms which have carried out exploration in Clarendon from as early as 1989 when the Jamaica Mining Company Limited secured a prospecting licence for an area called the Man Ridge Prospect.

Later that year, International Mineral exploration secured an interest in the prospect. After undertaking extensive exploration into the property, however, they concluded that the reserves were too small. The prospect was subsequently optioned to Clarendon Mining Limited, a subsidiary of Canadian Orvana Minerals.

Orvana then undertook more detailed work on the property and later found a partner in Ausjam.

Ausjam, with Clarendon Mining in 1996, tendered a joint application for a mining lease that was granted in June of 1997, but pulled out in 2001.

Roache said the Ausjam closure last year was only temporary, with Ausjam head Paul Sailah having made it clear he would only operate when he was on the island.

The commissioner of mines said, however, that he would need to speak with the Ausjam head on the matter since the mine should not be closed indefinitely.

“They have to do further exploration and he hasn’t done that. With all the rains this year, he did not do that,” Roache said. “I am about to write to him again to update us on his future work because it can’t stay just half open like that.”

williamsp@jamaicaobserver.com