Western Coal has also reported an increase in the Willow Creek mine coal reserve of 88% to 29.6 million tonnes, thereby extending the mine life and supporting potential expansion to 1.7 million tonnes per annum.
The mine’s current approvals support a production rate of up to 900,000 tonnes of high quality metallurgical coal per year, with applications underway to increase production by late 2011 to 1.7 million tonnes per year over a 13 year life of mine.
As part of the expansion, it is planned to increase the throughput capacity to the processing plant and rail load-out facility to handle over 3.7 million tonnes of coal per year. The newly expanded facilities will process coal from both the Willow Creek mine and the nearby Brule mine, eliminating the need to construct a plant and load-out facility for Brule.
Keith Calder, president and CEO of Western Coal, said: “With plans to grow production in our northeast BC mines from 2.2 million tonnes to nearly six million tonnes in three years’ time, the re-opening of the Willow Creek mine is an important milestone for Western in achieving its goals.”
A prefeasibility study, which was recently completed for the Willow Creek property, identifies in situ measured coal resources of 37.3 million tonnes and indicated resources of 11.6 million tonnes plus 0.3 million tonnes of inferred coal resources. This is an increase of 40% in measured plus indicated resources.
The study also contributes 27.7 million tonnes of proven run-of-mine (ROM) coal and 1.9 million tonnes of probable ROM coal within a designed open pit mine.
This new reserve is expected to produce up to seven million tonnes of coking coal and 14.6 million tonnes of high quality PCI coal. Previously reported reserves were 14.8 million proven and 0.9 million tonnes of probable ROM coal, Western Coal said.
