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US gold major Newmont Mining will evaluate assets this year for possible sale, president and CEO Richard O'Brien said at the weekend.

Newmont still has to decide if it will keep high-cost assets, especially in Australia, which it could “hive off pretty easily...if we decided to do it”, he told analysts on Friday.

Other assets which could be up for sale included the group's 18% stake in Toronto-based Gabriel Resources and a 40% holding in the Fort a la Corne diamond exploration joint-venture, in Canada.

“We have some other investments that we are going to have to evaluate,” O'Brien added.

However he said that the group's stake in the Canadian Oil Sands Trust was not an investment that it was considering getting out of.

Newmont expects gold sales this year to be in the same range as reported for 2007, but is battling high input costs, the group said last week.

The group has forecast sales of between 5,1-million ounces and 5,4-million ounces for this year, compared with 5,3-million ounces in 2007.

Cash costs averaged $406/oz in 2007, but are expected to rise to between $425/oz and $450/oz, as industrywide operating cost pressures are exacerbated by the mining of lower-grade ore this year.

To tackle rising costs, Newmont is building a power plant in Nevada, in the US, which will allow it to generate its own electricity and, as a result, cut costs at the operation by an estimated $25/oz, and a gold mill at Yanacocha, in Peru, which will improve recoveries.

The Nevada power plant is expected to be commissioned by mid-2008.

The group also announced last week that it expects its share of the capital costs for the Boddington gold project, in Australia, which it co-owns with South Africa-based AngloGold Ashanti, to be as high as $1,6-billion, compared with a previous estimate of between $0,9-billion and $1,1-billion.

Costs of building the project had been affected by changes in the value of the Australian dollar versus the US currency, design optimisation on the project, and labour and commodity cost escalation, the company said.

The Boddington openpit gold mine, about 130 km southeast of Perth, was closed in 2001, but Newmont and AngloGold plan to mine gold/copper ore which lies beneath the mine's depleted oxide pits.