With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/1222419
2009 High-grade, visible gold mineralization at Silver Standard Resources' Brucejack site encourages further drilling, with Brucejack (under new owners Pretium Resources) achieving commercial production in 2017 stretches north of Stewart along the Alaska border and east toward Dease Lake—goes back to the middle of the 19th century. The first burst of exploration happened in 1861 with the Stikine Gold Rush. Over the ensuing decades, two more gold rushes would draw thousands of prospectors to the area; more than 150 mines have oper- ated in the region since the arrival of those first explorers. The challenge with mining in the Golden Triangle has always been one of logistics. Remote, mountainous and very humid, the area gets inundated with snow between late September and early May: on average, just under 600 inches fall annually at Stewart Airport. While some enterprises found great success in the 20th century—including Premier Gold Mines, which began opera- tions in 1918 and was the largest gold mine in North America before shuttering in 1952— many struggled with the glacier-strewn landscape and high cost of operations. By the late 1990s, with the price of gold stuck below US$400 an ounce and silver at less than $10, many excavators sat idle. The rise of commodity prices (especially gold) in recent years has been a key part of the turnaround story, but so, too, have been investments in infrastructure. Key among them: the 2015 opening of the Stewart World Port (billed as the most "northerly ice-free port in Canada"); steady improve- ments to the Highway 37 corridor; and, most critically, construction of the Northwest Transmission Line, which runs parallel to Highway 37. Completed in 2014, the 344-kilo- metre line connects Terrace in the south to a variety of mining and forestry companies in the north, offering a cheaper, cleaner and more reliable form of power (hydroelectric) than the previous diesel generators. The first mine to take advantage of the new transmission line was Red Chris, which went into commercial production in 2015; it was followed by Brucejack in 2017 and Silvertip in 2018. Besides those three operating metal mines, there are now five proposed projects (Galore Creek, KSM, Kutcho, Red Mountain and Tenas) and more than 80 exploration projects in the region, according to the Ministry of Energy. In a sign of how hot things have become, major international miners are scouring the area for takeover opportunities: last August, Australia-based Newcrest Mining completed a 70-percent purchase of Red Chris for US$804 million, with Vancouver- headquartered Imperial Metals Corp. retaining a 30-percent interest. The Red Chris property—in the north- eastern corner of the Golden Triangle, 80 kilometres south of Dease Lake—stretches over 23,000 hectares and contains 77 min- eral tenures, five of them mining leases. The current mine, according to estimates by Imperial, has reserves (proven and prob- able) of 2.6 million ounces of gold and 2.4 billion pounds of copper. Production for 2019 was about 72 million pounds of copper and 36,000 ounces of gold—slightly below 2018 levels for both metals. With the current mine expected to last until 2043, the future at Red Chris is bright, which explains Newcrest's decision to buy in. Fraser MacCorquodale, general man- ager of exploration for Newcrest, spoke about the investment at Roundup. "Newcrest will only do mergers and acquisitions where we see the potential to unlock value by applying our unique skill sets. And that's exactly why we jumped into Red Chris. We could really see that we could make a difference," MacCorquodale told the crowd. "Newcrest has been flying around in northern B.C. since around 2005. We identified Red Chris as an opportunity very "Vancouver has amazing and, I believe, durable competitive advantages in the mining business. You have a centre of excel- lence. You don't have to build it; B.C., as a terrain, is geologicallly well endowed" – Rick Rule, president and CEO, Sprott U.S. Holdings FAR RIGHT: COURTESY OF PRETIUM RESOURCES APRIL 2020 BCBUSINESS 45 1956 Conwest Explora- tion Co. stakes the first claims for what will become the Red Chris gold-copper mine south of Dease Lake 1988 Consolidated Stikine Resources and Calpine Resources strike gold and silver at Eskay Creek. Generating 106 million ounces from 1994 until it closes in 2008, the property becomes the world's No. 5 silver producer 1990 After a bidding war between Vancouver financier Murray Pezim and Toronto's Ned Goodman, the latter's International Corona Corp. buys Stikine Resources with Placer Dome for $67 a share 2015 Taking advantage of power from the new Northwest Trans- mission Line, the Red Chris mine goes into production • 1964 Cominco geologist Ted Muraro discovers the vein mineralization of the future Snip gold mine 1986 With Delaware Resources, Cominco drills the Snip deposit, which goes on to pro- duce a million ounces of gold from 1991-99