Oceanagold - Reefton Gold Project

2 January 2007

Oceanagold Announces Dry Commissioning Of Its Reefton Gold Project

OceanaGold today announced that dry-commissioning of the Globe Progress process plant at the Reefton Gold Project on the South Island of New Zealand started during the last week of December 2006. Dry-commissioning of the 1 million tonne per annum (Mtpa) process plant commenced with the mills and is proceeding into wet-commissioning through mid-February 2007.

Mining has been active since July of 2006 and 21,300 tonnes of ore are currently stockpiled for processing through the crushing, grinding and flotation plant. First concentrate is expected to be shipped in mid-February 2007 and the processing plant is scheduled to be in full production by the end of First Quarter 2007. OceanaGold is forecasting 60,000 to 65,000 ounces of gold production from Reefton during 2007.

“This is the first new mine that OceanaGold has built and the commissioning of Reefton is proceeding to our expectation and representation. Mining is on target and recruitment of professional staff is complete. As such, we believe that we can achieve a full year of production from this operation.” CEO, Stephen Orr commented.

Background on OceanaGold

OceanaGold currently operates in the South Island of New Zealand and the Philippines. The company’s assets include New Zealand’s largest gold mine at Macraes, a new mine development in the Reefton Goldfield, an additional mine development called the Frasers Underground in the Macraes Goldfield and the Didipio Gold-Copper project in the Philippines. OceanaGold is capitalised at approximately A$450 million with forecast gold production of over 550,000 gold equivalent ounces (AuEq) by 2009.

The Reefton project consists of a surface mine and 1 Mtpa processing plant that is expected to mine about 500,000 ounces of gold over a 7 year life based on the current reserve of 6.65Mt @ 2.56 grams per tonne (g/t). The mineralisation is still open along strike and at depth. In addition, there is significant potential to discover additional reserves along the 35 kilometre mineralised trend within the Reefton Goldfield. For more details please visit the new OceanaGold website at, www.oceanagold.com.

ENDS-

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