The St Barbara Ltd (ASX: SBM) share price is in positive territory on Friday.
At the time of writing, the gold miner's shares are trading for $1.49, up 1.71%. This means in the past week, its shares have accelerated by 7%.
Let's take a closer look at some of the factors that are influencing St Barbara shares.
What's happening at St Barbara?
The St Barbara share price is being pumped up today as the price of gold has surged to US$1,900 an ounce. This follows the tense stand-off between the West and Russia over NATO's expansion and Ukraine's potential membership in the alliance.
In times of uncertainty, investors traditionally run to safe-haven assets like gold which has spiked around 5.5% since early February.
In addition, the company released its ore reserves and mineral resources update to the ASX early this morning.
St Barbara highlighted the following:
Total ore reserves are estimated at: 97.8 Mt (million tonnes) @ 1.8 g/t Au (grams of gold per tonne) for 5.8 Moz (million ounces) of contained gold, comprising:
- Leonora Operations: 12.9 Mt @ 5.1 g/t Au for 2.1 Moz of contained gold
- Simberi Operations: 36.7 Mt @ 1.8 g/t Au for 2.1 Moz of contained gold
- Atlantic Operations: 48.2 Mt @ 1.0 g/t Au for 1.6 Moz of contained gold
In summary, the company's ore reserves have decreased by 460koz (thousand ounces) since 30 June 2021. This was due to adopting an open-pit mining approach to its Tower Hill project in Western Australia and thus removing its underground reserves.
St Barbara advised Tower Hill's ore reserves will be adjusted following the completion of a pre-feasibility study in Q1 FY23.
Furthermore, the mineral resources statement is listed below:
Total mineral resources are estimated at: 215.8 Mt @ 1.9 g/t Au for 13.5 Moz of contained gold, comprising:
- Leonora Operations: 67.2 Mt @ 3.4 g/t Au for 7.3 Moz of contained gold
- Simberi Operations: 90.0 Mt @ 1.5 g/t Au for 4.2 Moz of contained gold
- Atlantic Operations: 58.6 Mt @ 1.1 g/t Au for 2.0 Moz of contained gold
The company's mineral resources have increased since the beginning of the new financial year. The change of mining approach for Tower Hill led to the inclusion of additional mineral resources following the net mining depletion.
About the St Barbara share price
Over the past 12 months, St Barbara shares have plummeted around 28%, with year-to-date up marginally by 2%. The company's share price reached a 52-week high of $2.16 in early 2021 before treading on a downward path.
Based on today's price, St Barbara commands a market capitalisation of roughly $1.06 billion, with approximately 709.53 million shares outstanding.
