The Pascua-Lama property is located in the high Andean Mountains, in what has been designated as the Eastern Belt of Hydrothermal Alteration. The gold, silver, and copper mineralization and alteration assemblages at Pascua-Lama are associated with a structurally controlled acid sulfate hydrothermal system hosted by intrusive and volcanic rock sequences of Upper Paleozoic and Middle Tertiary age.

Alteration and mineralization is of the high-sulfidation, epithermal type. As is typical with high-sulfidation epithermal deposits, the principal metal commodities at Pascua-Lama are gold and silver – the copper content is usually sub-economic.

Numerous breccias bodies occur in the Esperanza, Quebrada de Pascua and Lama areas. At the surface, these breccias vary in size from outcrops measured in centimeters up to hundreds of meters. Typically the breccias show a strong correlation to zones of intersection of two or more major structural zones. Breccia Central, the large inter mineral breccia pipe, occurs in the Quebrada de Pascua area. On the surface, this breccia body is about 650 meters long and up to 250 meters in width, while underground, between 200 and 400 meters below the surface, the composite body measures about 550 meters in length and up to 130 meters in width. It extends to at least 700 meters below surface. This well mineralized breccia pipe is evidence of an explosive hydrothermal event related to the formation of the Quebrada de Pascua ore deposit. Breccia Oeste and Breccia Sur are the two large post mineralization breccias pipe complexes located in the mine area. Oriented north/south along the Breccia Oeste fault zone in the Esperanza area, the Breccia Oeste pipe measures up to 500 meters long, up to 150 meters wide, and extends up to 300 meters below surface.

The Pascua-Lama project is designed as a large-scale open pit operation centered at an elevation of 4,800 meters.

The fleet assembly is progressing with 10 of the planned 30 trucks already assembled and almost all of the auxiliary equipment ready to work. Shovel assembly is scheduled to begin in February 2011. The schedule for pre-stripping shows 85M tonnes mined in 18 months before start up of first process line.

The principal processing stages for this circuit are: primary crushing, autogenous (AG)/ball milling (wet grinding), counter current decant (CCD) washing, pre-aeration and oxygen enhanced cyanide leaching, CCD thickening for pregnant solution recovery, cyanide destruction, Merrill Crowe zinc precipitation, mercury retorting, and smelting.
Additional process stages for Refractory ore treatment are: roughing/cleaner/scavenger flotation with regrinding of rougher concentrate, final copper concentrate thickening, filtering and bagging. The refractory ore is floated, with a differential flotation scheme.