``The Lamaque Mine is currently permitted for 1,200 tonnes per day production which also includes the Northeast portion of the North Wall zone.``
That was a note from the January 2009 bankable Lamaque study that was prepared for Fortis Bank. It means that the 2008 initial 1,200 tpd permit gave us permission to mine the Northeast portion of the North Wall zone at anytime. It means that we can mine that particular part of the North Wall right now if we wanted to and if we had infrastructure (and portal) already established, regardless of when we receive the next permit. We just wouldn`t be able to use a long-hole stoping approach. The next permit is the one that provides approval to use long-hole stoping in both the Bedard Dyke and the North Wall zone mining areas.
Also of note, it appears to me as if the North Wall portal is positioned on the east side of the North Wall zone (on the side of our already existing permit) - unless they recently decided to change the plans.
It never hurts to have contingency mining approvals built into already established mining permits.
3 comments:
Do you recall anything special about the ore up on the North.northeast wall?
Unfortunately, I don`t have any info has to what makes the Northeast portion of the North Wall zone so special. However, the North Wall zone overall has around 250,000 P&P Reserves ounces and another 400,000 Inferred ounces.
I put some thought to this and came up with one possibility.
The North Wall Zone is comprised of all 4 mineralized structures historically found on the Sigma half of our Lamaque property:
``The North Wall Zone – including all four ore structures (dykes, shears, north dippers and flats), and accessed by a new decline off the north wall of the Sigma pit.``
Though, I believe a large majority of the mineralization is in the form of dykes (which might be most ideal for long-hole bulk mining).
It`s possible that the Northeast portion of the North Wall Zone was included in the original (large) permit because it does not need a secondary permit (i.e. long-hole stoping permit). For example, if the primary ore structure in that particular area are flats and Century prefers to mine the area using a low-profile room and pillar approach, similar to the approach used for Lamaque 2.
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