OUR NEIGHBOURS - RED CHRIS90 minutes up Highway 37 from Treaty is Red Chris (Newcrest/Imperial Metals). I think they went into production arround 2014. Like most GT porphyries, the Red Chris is mostly copper with gold while the Goldstorm is 90% gold with copper making direct comparisons more difficult. However, it may be worth looking at given how many people seem baffeled by low grade deposits.
It's an open pit about 18km off the highway. It cost roughly $1/2 billion in capex. Per anum it produces just under 240,000 ounces of gold equivalent using todays spot prices (73,787 oz gold & 88.3M Lbs Copper). Its open pit insitu grade has been about 0.8 g/t AuEq but these numbers change with the value of metals (at the time of the PFS it was about 0.66 g/t AuEq - liokely higher now with the copper surge).
Last week they put out a PEA on a block cave mine under the open pit. Attempting to get and apples to apples comparison, if you use the values (prices and recovery) Tudor did for Goldstorm, the block cave at Red Chis is about 1 g/t AuEq. This is what Newcrest said:
"The Study builds on Newcrest's experience and success with block cave developments in Australia, with the
block cave mining method particularly well suited to the porphyry deposits found at Red Chris and throughout the Golden Triangle region of British Columbia. The Red Chris underground resource extends to
a depth of 1,200m below the surface with economic mineralisation typically being low grade and vertical in nature. Given the depth and nature of the mineralisation, the extraction of the resource is best suited to a bulk underground mining method. Block cave mining was selected due to its low operating cost, productivity, and suitability to the geometry and conditions of the resource."
Here is the PEA for the block cave:
https://www.newcrest.com/sites/default/files/2021-10/211012_Red%20Chris%20Block%20Cave%20Pre-Feasibility%20Study%20confirms%20Tier%201%20potential%20%E2%80%93%20Market%20release%20.pdf For what it's worth, KSM is scheduled to use block cave after open pit as well. So far we've seen multiple holes go to those depts and end in mineralization on goldstorm. If someone were to ever develop the Goldstorm it would take years to get an open pit up and going and far longer to get the deep stuff out (block cave?).
What do you think gold will be at in 6 years or 12 years given 13.5 trillion dollars have been created out of thin air in the last 18 months alone? There are so many sub one gram projects making huge money
today including ones in northern BC, Yukon, and Alaska that a 0.74 g/t AuEq M&I and 0.79 g/t AuEq Inf at Goldstorm doesn't seem concerning. Espicially when it looks like the close to surface area is more enriched than the rest of it.
We're not going to know the details until the PEA comes out but the results so far seem better than the ones from last year.