Newmont Mining Corp is keen to buy the 50 percent of the Kalgoorlie gold mine in Western Australia it does not already own should a deal to sell the stake to another buyer fall through, Chief Executive Gary Goldberg said on Monday. "We're interested, yes," Goldberg said in an interview on the sidelines of the BMO Global Metals & Mining Conference in Hollywood, Florida. "We would love to have more of that asset if we could work something out that made sense," he said. Newmont is the mine's operator.
Barrick Gold Corp last July said it would put its 50 percent interest in the Kalgoorlie mine on the block. In November, two sources told Reuters Barrick was reviewing the financial backing behind an approximately $1.3 billion bid for its stake by Minjar Gold, a unit of Shanghai-listed Shandong Tyan Home. Little-known Minjar trumped offers by Australian, Chinese and Canadian companies, as well as Newmont, the world's second-biggest gold miner, for the asset, the sources said. Bloomberg reported this month that the sale has stalled as the buyer faces delays in securing financing.
Barrick has declined to comment on the transaction. "While it would be good to get this uncertainty done, if Barrick wants to stay and partner with us we're OK with that as well," Goldberg said. In a wide-ranging interview, Goldberg said the Denver-based miner was open to partnerships with other miners to jointly develop large gold deposits.
"With the right partner we might consider different, bigger projects," he said, adding the company also has a strong internal pipeline of projects for at least the next decade.
David Garofalo, chief executive of rival gold producer Goldcorp Inc, has strongly promoted the idea that gold miners should join forces to develop large, expensive projects so they can share the financial and engineering risks.
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