The company will continue to work on finalizing the environmental permits necessary to operate the mill.

As a result of the decision to defer mill construction and focus on optimizing the mill plan, Allied Nevada said it has not developed a revised time frame, scope, or capital cost for different mill scenarios or revised long-term projections and estimates of production. The company expects to make a decision on when mill construction will be resumed once a new feasibility study is completed.

Allied Nevada received approval in early December 2012 from the Nevada Department of Environmental Protection to construct a 130,000-st/d mill at Hycroft. Previous planning had targeted a mill startup in late 2014 and full operations during the first quarter of 2015.

Regarding eventual development of a milling operation at Hycroft, Allied Nevada President and CEO Randy Buffington said, “This is a world-class, multimillion-ounce, low-cost deposit located in the right jurisdiction, and I am confident that this is a project that will be built.”

Allied Nevada expects to continue mining existing Hycroft heap leach reserves of approximately 2 million oz of gold and 84.3 million oz of silver during the six-year period from the start of 2014. Assuming heap leach operations only, production during that time frame is expected to average 225,000 oz/y of gold and 2.7 million oz/y of silver.

Hycroft produced 39,195 oz of gold and 132,841 oz of silver in the second quarter of 2013. Allied Nevada’s full-year 2013 production guidance for Hycroft is currently 175,000 to 200,000 oz of gold and 900,000 to 1.1 million oz of silver.