International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. Jan. 5 reported progress toward optimization of the Livengood gold project in Interior Alaska.

The 2014 program included metallurgical work; mine production scheduling studies; power supply alternatives review; and alternative camp reviews.

The company says this work has developed an improved production schedule, as compared to the project's 2013 feasibility study and generated detailed work plans for 2015.

These plans include additional metallurgical tests and engineering, including confirmation of the flow sheet and optimizing the operating costs.

Once defined, the operating costs generated from this work will be used to evaluate and optimize the project configuration and capital costs, including determination of the optimum scale for the project.

In order to better position Livengood for a construction decision when warranted by market conditions, environmental baseline studies continue at the project.