Largest drill program anywhere in the world, beside BFD Osisko Mining’s (TSX: OSK) 400,000-metre drill program at its Windfall project in Quebec should lead to a resource update before the end of the year, a feasibility study and permitting in 2018, and construction in 2019, Osisko president and CEO John Burzynski announced at The Northern Miner’s Canadian Mining Symposium in London earlier this month.
“We could be pouring gold as early as 2020,” Burzynski said during a presentation at the one-day mining event at Canada House on May 9. “It’s an aggressive time frame … We’ve got a very aggressive program with lots of drills and more drills coming.”
Twenty-two drill rigs are turning at the project and Osisko will have 25 rigs by the start of June in what is easily the largest drill program on any one deposit in Canada and arguably the largest anywhere in the world.
“We started with a 50,000-metre drill program in October 2015, increased that to 100,000, and then to 150,000, and then last December we added 250,000,” Burzynski says. “You’ll likely see us increasing that drill program again because all of those current metres are going within the main deposit, and outside the main deposit we have another proximate 3,300 km2 that has similar exploration potential.”
The company consists of the same management team, engineers and geologists, as well many of the same directors, who were responsible for putting into production the Canadian Malartic mine, the largest gold mine in Canada. That mine moved from first drill hole to first gold pour in a little over six years …
Continue reading at The Northern Miner.