Ireland Inc. Receives Approval For Amended Production Permit
Henderson, NV - Ireland Inc. (the "Company"), a mining exploration and development company focused on the extraction of precious and base metals from mineral deposits in the Southwestern United States, recently announced that the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection ("NDEP") has approved the amendments submitted by the Company for its Water Pollution Control Permit for the Columbus Project near Tonopah, Nevada.
The amended permit allows the Company to mine up to 790,000 tons of raw materials per year, a ten-fold increase over the original permitted tonnage, and increases the depth to which the Company can mine at the Columbus Project to 40 feet, a 60% increase from the original 25 feet permitted depth. Certain other minor process modifications were also included in the approved amendments. Based on calculations completed by SRK Consulting, an independent international consulting and engineering firm hired by the Company, if the 320-acre permitted mine site area were mined at the maximum allowable rate of 790,000 tons of raw materials per year, there would be sufficient raw materials to allow the area to be mined continuously for a period of 11 years or more.
"We are very pleased that our application to amend the production permit for the Columbus Project was approved," stated Douglas Birnie, Chief Executive Officer of the Company. "This represents the achievement of another significant milestone for the Columbus Project. We expect to install our 30 ton-per-day pilot processing module and report initial precious metal and calcium carbonate recovery results before year end."
The Company also announced that it has completed drilling 14 holes of the 28-hole drill program currently underway within a 5,000-acre area of interest that is adjacent to the 320-acre area covered by the Company's existing mining permits. The drilling is being conducted by McEwen Geological LLC under chain-of-custody parameters, and splits have been taken from the drill samples and sent to two independent laboratories for analysis.
"This phase of our drilling program follows the recently completed 18-hole drill program that was conducted within the permitted mine site area," continued Birnie. "Upon completion of the current phase of the exploration program, we expect to have a much better definition of the mineralization within the 5,000-acre area of interest that we have identified within the Columbus Basin."
SOURCE: Ireland Inc.