BAKU

Azerbaijan’s state-owned gold mining company AzerGold plans to produce 61,074 ounces of gold this year, the company head said.

“This forecast may be exceeded,” Zakir Ibrahimov told reporters.

He said that the company projected to produce 122,400 ounces of silver.

There are two state-owned gold mining companies in Azerbaijan – AzerGold and London-listed Anglo-Asian Mining Company PLC.

In 2021, AzerGold mined 61,5000 ounces of gold, 2.5 percent up from 2020, and 134,400 ounces of silver, 10.9 percent more than a year earlier.

The company works at gold and iron ore deposits of Garadag, Chovdar, Heydag, Dagkesemen, the Kohnemeden area and the Kyuryakchay basin.

Baku expects more gold output to be produced at deposits in the territories previously occupied by Armenian forces. The government is spending millions of dollars for infrastructure projects in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions that have been returned to central government control during a war in autumn 2020.

The country’s President Ilham Aliyev said last year that the government had begun preparations for court proceedings to recover compensation from foreign companies for the illegal development of gold deposits in Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding regions.

“This process has already begun. We have invited well-known international law firms, and now they are preparing court cases. Foreign companies have exploited our gold deposits – Soyudlu in the Kalbajar region and Vejnali in the Zangilan region, as well as in other places,” Aliyev told in an interview to the state TV.

Previously, 74 percent of the Soyudlu (ZOD) deposit was under the development of the Russian company GeoProMining, when the Kalbajar region in Nagorno-Karabakh was controlled by Armenian forces. The rest of the deposit is located in Armenia’s territory.

“We had no contacts with the Russian company, which had been the operator at the Soyudlu (Zod) field in recent years, but Azerbaijan will regain its rights to the main part of the field,” Ali Aliyev, the geological service at Ecology and Natural Resources Ministry head, told the Tribune.

He said that experts had also been making assessments of Vejnali and Gyzylbulag deposits.