OZ Minerals today released its Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves Statement as at 30 June 2008.

OZ Minerals’ Executive Group Manager – Exploration, Tony Manini, said “the Statement shows significant year-on-year increases in OZ Minerals’ Group Mineral Resources with gold up 19%, copper up 22.1% and zinc up slightly 2.3%.

“Silver and lead decreased slightly by 2.7% and 3.4% respectively while nickel fell significantly (78%) due to the exclusion of the Wiluna nickel laterite resource,” he said.

OZ Minerals’ Group Mineral Resources (contained metal) as at 30 June 2008 are estimated to contain 19.0 million ounces of gold, 396.7 million ounces of silver, 5.9 million tonnes of copper, 18.2 million tonnes of zinc, 2.6 million tonnes of lead and 0.2 million tonnes of nickel.

OZ Minerals Group Ore Reserves (contained metal) as at June 30 2008 were 4.24 million ounces gold, 90.59 million ounces silver, 1.91 million tonnes copper, 5.13 million tonnes, 0.6 million tonnes lead and 0.04 million tonnes nickel.

This represents a year-on-year Reserve increase of 0.03 million tonnes for copper (2%) and decreases of 0.02 million ounces gold (1%), 12.84 million ounces silver (12%), 18.5 tonnes nickel (33%), 1.11 million tonnes zinc (18%) and 0.1 million tonnes lead (14%).

Mr Manini said “the strong lift in Group copper and gold Mineral Resources has resulted primarily from the addition of several new discoveries at Prominent Hill and Sepon.  However, these discoveries require extensive infill drilling to lift resource confidence before an initial Ore Reserve can be established.

“Likewise at Golden Grove and Rosebery, significant new discoveries made over the past two years require extensive infill drilling prior to establishing Ore Reserves.

“Pleasingly, drilling subsequent to this 30 June 2008 Statement across our sites indicates potential for increases to Ore Reserves and Mineral Resources,” he concluded.

A detailed breakdown of these estimates along with the methods and assumptions used are contained in the attached Mineral Resource and Ore Reserve tables, together with the accompanying Explanatory notes

Ore Reserves Explanatory Notes (PDF, 275kb)

Mineral Resources Explanatory Notes (PDF, 1.2Mb)

http://www.ozminerals.com/Operations/Resources–Reserves.html