Mystery prevails over who will test Busang samples

Mystery prevails over who will test Busang samples

SYDNEY (Reuter): Eleven tons of Indonesian ore seemed to
vanish into thin air yesterday as Australian laboratories refused
to say who would decide if the Busang gold deposit still rated as
the world's largest.

Drilling samples totaling 11,795 kg from the controversial
Busang gold property in Indonesia's Kalimantan province left
Jakarta on Tuesday for testing in the west Australian city of
Perth.

A Busang spokeswoman said the samples were placed in a 20-foot
(6.1-metre) container and flown out under escort by a security
team hired from London by Canadian mining consultant Strathcona
Mineral Services, who did the drilling.

But yesterday their whereabouts were a mystery. Perth's major
laboratories clammed up on whether they would be doing the tests
to determine whether the samples lived up to billion-dollar
expectations or were just so much fool's gold.

All major laboratories contacted in Perth by Reuters knew the
samples were either on their way or had already landed.

But all said they could "neither confirm nor deny" they would
be the ones to test the samples.

"I can't really tell you because of client confidentiality,"
said an official with Perth's leading laboratory, Scientific
Services' Analabs, when asked if his agency would do the tests.

The unidentified official said he knew nothing about the
samples and that he hadn't spoken to Toronto-based Strathcona.

"I can't tell you that," an official with Amdel Laboratories
said when asked the same question. "But at this stage I'm not
aware of it," he said.

The reply from Australian Laboratory Services (ALS) was
similar: "I can't really say," an official said. "But I don't
think its going to be us."

But the ALS official offered the nugget that work on the
samples would involve metallurgical testing, more the sort of
work which Normet Pty Ltd carried out, he said.

Normet helped start the Indonesian gold rush when it performed
initial sampling which indicated that Busang was a major deposit.

Normet director Phil Hearse for comment but another Normet
official said it was not known where the latest Busang samples
would be tested.

All officials contacted said they would know if their
laboratory was the one to do the Busang tests.

Canada's Bre-X Minerals Ltd has a 45-percent stake in Busang,
Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold Inc of the United States has 15
percent, the Indonesian government 10 percent and the Nusamba
Group and its local partner the rest.

Bre-X shocked the mining community last month by admitting it
was possible the amount of gold in the Busang deposit had been
overstated after initially estimating it contained 70.95 million
ounces, which would make it the century's biggest find.