I was going from off the top of my head last night - I couldn`t remember if it was 150 days or 180 days (I wanted to be conservative until verifying). I planned on going back to SEDAR to doubled check the expected timeframe. It`s a bit of good news. The Jan 14th document states 150 days (not 180 days):
``Issuance of permit expected 150 days after issuance of Lamaque Exploration permit.``
It may not sound like a lot, but it is very meaningful. The 150 days converts to 5 months, essentially (instead of 6). The Lamaque Exploration permit was granted at the end of April. Of the 5 months, 1 month has already elapsed. We start mining BD in July, as such 2 of the 5 months will be elapsed come the start of July. It means that we will only have 3 more months (at that point) before the long-hole stoping permit is expected. It means that the 20,000 tonne BD bulk sample only has to sustain us for 3 months (July to September) before we can potentially get into full scale mining of the BD. Perhaps Century can apply for a 10,000 tonne bulk sample add on (then mine 10,000 tonnes per month from BD for the 3 month period).
There is still also a chance that we can get our long-hole stoping permit early. I think that things are mainly dependent on finalizing the crown pillar study. Best I can tell (from the various documents), all of the preliminary stages have gone very well over the past couple of years on the crown pillar study.
Century will be performing a lot of the development work ahead of actually receiving the permit. For example, the exploration drifts will not only help us to explore but will be used to reach the long-hole mining areas soon after we get the permit.
From the BD NR in early May: ``The development of the exploration drifts will be used in preparation for mining, which will commence upon completion of the crown pillar study.``
Century will likely still need to develop the long-hole stope itself once the permit is granted, but I think it helps a lot that the portal, the decline, the drifts, etc. will already be in place prior to the permit being granted. They can probably hire the people and purchase the equipment in advance also (i.e. the long-hole drill that is arriving in a wk or 2). It shouldn`t take us too much longer after that point to get going with long-hole stoping of the BD. Mind you, they will likely also need to put in the crown pillar before they mine under the hwy. It`s not clear when they will reach that stage though. It`s not clear if they will be able to perform some long-hole stope mining prior to reaching the ore located under the hwy.
I view long-hole stope mining as being huge for us. I view it as almost a form of bulk mining (in my mind anyway), with low cash cost per oz potential. You can check out the World Gold Council`s description of the long-hole stope mining method (middle of page). It comes with a small diagram also:
http://www.trustingold.com/production/mining-methods/
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