VANCOUVER - Yellowhead Mining Inc. announced last Tuesday that the British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office (EAO) has approved the application information requirements (AIR) for the company’s Harper Creek copper-gold-silver project.
The project is located approximately 20 kilometers southeast of Clearwater.
The AIR, or terms of reference, specifies the information that must be contained in the application for an Environmental Assessment Certificate.
Yellowhead CEO Ian Smith said, “We see this as a very important step in advancing the Harper Creek project to the next stage, which is the completion of the application, or Environmental Assessment Report. We can now focus our efforts on completing the baseline studies and compiling the information needed to prepare a comprehensive and conforming application.”
The Harper Creek Feasibility Study, an essential element of the application, which is scheduled for completion by March 31, 2012.
On Thursday Yellowhead reported the findings of recently completed comminution and flotation testwork done to support engineering design for Harper Creek.
The comminution testwork on the deposit resulted in a four per cent improvement in anticipated copper recovery. The comminution testwork has indicated a much coarser primary grind, resulting in a 13 per cent reduction in the grinding circuit power requirements. Both results represent an improvement on the assumptions used in the Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) filed on SEDAR on April 1, 2011.
“We are extremely pleased with the very significant increase in copper recovery which will be reflected in more robust project cash flow,” commented CEO Ian Smith. “The reduction in total comminution power requirements will have positive capital and operating cost impacts.”
The Harper Creek project is a copper-gold-silver volcanogenic sulphide deposit with a measured and indicated resource of 563.2 million tonnes grading 0.31 per cent Cu (3.6 billion pounds of copper) plus 0.032 g/t gold and 1.08 g/t silver, plus an inferred resource of 117 million tonnes grading 0.29 per cent Cu (0.7 billion pounds of copper).
Yellowhead has a 100 per cent interest in the Harper Creek development project, with some provisions. A Preliminary Economic Assessment Report (‘’PEA’’), which demonstrated the technical and economic viability of Harper Creek, was completed at the end of March and filed on SEDAR on April 1 and can be viewed on www.sedar.com. The PEA demonstrated a 22-year project life at a milling rate of 70,000 tonnes per day, and a planned production of 149 million lbs. copper in concentrate per annum for years one to eight, (132Mlb/y over the life of the mine).