PC Gold (ASX:PC2) will refrain from ordering excessively priced fuel, Executive Chair Ash Pattison tells this news service.
On the sidelines of the Gold Coast Gold Conference last week, Pattison reveals he is willing to switch diesel products if they offer better value for money.
“We are not just going to take diesel at any cost but, with the current prices, we will take whatever diesel we can get to keep rigs turning,” he tells Mining.com.au.
Pattison will also choose more fuel efficient equipment to help reduce the company’s $4,500 daily rigging costs.
“Sea rigs use over 1,500 litres a day,” he says.
“We are allocating diesel available to whether that [will] be diamond rigs that use less fuel, so [it might be] more expensive drilling but less [expensive on] fuel.”
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission reported that average diesel prices jumped by 10 per cent to $2.52 a litre across the nation’s five largest cities in seven days.
The federal government is responding with a new bill in parliament to halve diesel and petrol excise by 26.3 cents a litre for at least three months. The measure, which has attracted bipartisan support, could reduce refuelling costs for a 65 litre tank by almost $19.
The government intends to completely waive the heavy vehicle road user charge and defer scheduled price increases for another six months.
Other strategies include doubling penalties for “price gouging” fuel retailers, appointing a national fuel supply taskforce and releasing 20% of national fuel reserves with a preference towards regional Australia.
“The longer this war goes on the worse the impacts will be,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese tells the Australian Associated Press.
“I and the government understand that people are really worried but we have a plan to get through this,” he adds.
PC Gold previously raised $24 million to continue its “aggressive” drilling campaign at the project. The amount was in addition to $13.5 million of proceeds from its October 2025 initial public offering.
“With that fundraise completed six weeks ago the main objective of that is to keep drilling aggressively – getting diesel supply long-term will be our biggest challenge,” Pattison says.
“That [capital raising] has really been driven by exceptional drill results. Over 22,000 metres of drilling has been done since we listed.”
A Prefeasibility Study is expected to be released before the end of October 2026. The document is hoped to demonstrate how the “major deposit” containing an estimated 2 million ounces of gold can deliver “on-scale”.
“That will highlight to the market what we are looking at from a potential scale,” Pattison says.
“We are targeting a 3 million tonne program plant, fed by both underground and open pit mine sources. A 2,000 headbreak should deliver around 170,000 ounces a year production.”
Fellow director Kevin Puil reveals retail investors are replacing currency with gold.
“We are seeing gold as an alternative to the dollar, which is constantly being diluted, [and] also it provides a good hedge against inflation, which we think with the developments in the Middle East, inflation is going to run – and we think gold is a good place to be for investors to preserve their capital,” Pull tells Mining.com.au.
The Gold Coast Gold Conference was held over two days (25-26 March 2026) at the QT Hotel in Surfers Paradise, Queensland.
Mining.com.au was a media partner for the Gold Coast Gold Conference 2026 and attended both days.
PC Gold is a gold mineral exploration entity with assets in the Northern Territory’s Pine Creek region.
Write to Richard Szabo at Mining.com.au
Images: Stuart Shepherd, Mining.com.au
