Veteran miners adopt an old-school approach on Bonaparte Plateau
Veteran miners adopt an old-school approach on Bonaparte Plateau
From page A1 Veteran hard-rock miner Harvey Callow grabs a hose on the rock-strewn floor, points it to the wall and starts to rinse off a light covering of dirt. “This is the juicy stuff,” he exclaims, while the torrent of water and his headlamp exposes high-grade gold-bearing ore suspended in a streak of white quartz. Callow and fellow miner Don Fugere are working 30 metres underground, down a mining shaft known as a decline in the industry.
KEITH ANDERSON/THE DAILY NEWS Harvey Callow works in the shaft-decline ramp, where Encore Renaissance Resources Corp. is exploring for a gold deposit.
Tunneling below the Earth’s surface to explore for minerals typically happens after tens of millions of dollars are spent on exploration and feasibility studies.
That’s the way it occurred at New Afton, on Kamloops’ western boundary.
But Encore Renaissance Resources Corp. is doing it differently by making the project more economic as it explores for gold and proves up a resource promoters believe is much larger.
“We’re doing it like they used to do it 50 years ago,” said Roger McClay, president of BCT, a company that sold a stake in the Bonaparte mine to Encore Renaissance (TSX: EZ) last year in order to raise needed financing. BCT is a partner and contractor running the mining operation. Because it is doing exploration and mining in-house, McClay said investors are saving about half on costs.
The project is considered an exploration for minerals, but BCT has already profited by digging trenches for showings near the surface. In late summer it trucked tonnes of ore, considered a bulk sample, to a refinery in Washington State to help finance further exploration.
The property has been explored since the 1970s, with about 200 diamond drill holes. Fifteen years ago, McClay’s company bulk sampled from a small open pit, sending ore to a smelter in Trail, when gold was little more than one-third of today’s value.
Today the operation is small, employing about 10 workers on two shifts that run seven days a week. The work involves blasting the tunnel, removing ore and waste rock and drilling and screening the walls to ensure safety.
“The cost of putting an Afton (mine) into production in time is seven to 10 years,” McClay said. “What we’re doing and achieving can be done on the go. It’s easler to accomplish and justify.”
Bruce Madu, regional geologist for the Ministry of Energy and Mines, said the project is unusual and agreed it is more typical of the way exploration was done in the past — without tens of millions spent on drilling and feasibility studies first.
“It is reminiscent of the old days, in that you don’t have a highly defined deposit. You’d quite literally drift along and chase the veins.”
But Madu also said B.C.’s mining legacy is haunted by worker deaths and environmental damage — something the province is keen to prevent.
“In that sense it’s old fashioned, but we’re in a modern world.”
The ministry sends mining inspectors to the site regularly and also ensures environmental standards are being met.
The work is being done on a 300-metre by 300-metre “brown zone” that can be disturbed under the terms of the permit.
There is also logging by an unrelated firm nearby.
The publicly traded company owns thousands of hectares of exploration rights surrounding it.
McClay goes back and forth between Kamloops and his home in Tsawwassen frequently to monitor the project’s progress – a welcome commute in a lifetime spent exploring on other continents. The miners, too, are happy to be working in their home province.
The company has been able to find most suppliers and workers in the city, including its trucking contract and assaying.
McClay said the proximity of the city to the operation, about 45 minutes from Westsyde, makes miners — many used to working in the Northwest Territories or overseas — happier and reduces costs because it is easier to replace parts or bring in equipment by road from a major centre.
The publicly traded firm recently completed more financing. It plans to continue its tunneling through the year.