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.