Here is an old start up plan for the mine. Forget their price estimates but there is a lot of good information in this report.
Western States Engineering (WSE) is pleased to provide herein a Start-up Plan for the Emerald Isle Copper Mine, including mine plans, heap leach, solvent extraction plant modifications and electro-winning plant modifications. Capital and Operating Cost Estimates are provided to an order of accuracy of plus/minus 15%.
Pre-production capital will be approximately $2.601 million with crushing and working capital. This assumes that mining will be using leased mining equipment and a lease origination cost of $400,000 is included in the Capital Budget. It also assumes that crushing and agglomeration equipment will be leased and is amortized over the life of the operation and a lease origination cost of $200,000 is included for this equipment.
Operating cost will be approximately $1.06 per pound of copper produced, including project administrative costs and indirects.
Ore will be mined and fed directly onto a screen with 1” mesh. Oversize material will be fed to a portable jaw crusher in open circuit. The screen undersize and crusher discharge will be fed directly to a rotary agglomerator where sulfuric acid will be used as the binder. The ore will discharge to a stockpile by conveyor and will be acid cured for ten days prior to transferring to the leach heap by truck.
The Emerald Isle Mine is a fully developed oxidized copper ore body with complete solvent extraction and electro-winning plants. The copper deposit is classified as an exotic oxide copper where the copper mineral Tenorite acts a cement binding fragments in basal pediment conglomerate. The geological reserve (proven, probable and possible) is 2.6 million tons grading 0.56% copper in-situ. The project also has 1.2 million tons of tailings grading 0.22% copper. The proven and probable reserve at the site, including tailings hosts 22.3 million pounds of copper using a 70% recovery factor in year one, 10% in year two and 5% in year three. The mining method used is open pit and the stripping ratio is 1.3:1, waste to ore. The project is currently on care and maintenance. The first two years of stripping will be minimal since the pit hosts approximately 860,000 tons of pre-stripped ore, the bulk of which has already been drilled and blasted, ready for mining.
Of the 22.3 million pounds of recoverable copper, 15 million pounds is considered to be ‘easily recoverable’ and includes approximately 5 million pounds contained in tailings. The processing plants are designed to produce 8,000 pounds of premium grade cathode copper per day, grading 99.99% purity. Approximately 75% of the equipment required to expand the plant capacity to 15,000 pounds per day has been purchased and is on site, ready for installation. The cost of this expansion is included in the Capital Cost Section of this study.
The Emerald Isle ore body hosts approximately 15 million pounds of easily recoverable copper in ore in the fully developed pit. The operation will commence by mining pre-stripped ore in the pit bottom, using the 825 series mine plans which contemplate the mining of 900,000 tons without major push-backs in the pit. The 825 mine plan is included in the section titled ‘Mine Plans’. Year One and Two will focus on mining 586,000 tons in the pit bottom which has zero stripping, has already been drilled, blasted and acidified. The availability of this ore will significantly decrease operating costs during the first two years of operations.
At approximately mid-Year Two, the limited push-backs in the 825 Mine Plan will commence to expose additional ore without significant stripping costs. Upon completion of the 825 Mine Plan, the mining will shift to the $1.05 pit with stripping ratio increasing to 3:1, waste to ore, exposing approximately 1.5 million additional tons of ore, depending on future prices.
Ore will be mined, crushed, agglomerated, acid cured and trucked to the existing 150,000 square feet heap leach pad. During the life of the project, the pad will be expanded to 350,000 square feet area to accommodate the remaining ore. Oxidized copper contained in the ore will be leached using a dilute solution of sulfuric acid, containing approximately 10 grams of sulfuric acid per liter of solution.
The acid reacts with the copper in the rock to produce a soluble copper sulfate which discharges to a lined collection ditch and runs to a pregnant leach solution (PLS) pond. This pond feeds the Solvent Extraction Plant. The copper is extracted using a commercial organic reagent in a kerosene organic solvent at approximately 7% reagent. This step is followed by a stripping step whereby the loaded organic is stripped using strong acid from the Electro-winning Plant. The Solvent Extraction step increases copper concentration from 1.5 grams of copper per liter in the PLS to 34 grams per liter in strong electrolyte.
The rich electrolyte is then pumped to the Electro-winning Plant where copper is electroplated from solution to form 99.99% pure copper cathode as the final product. Copper is stripped manually from stainless steel starter sheets, stacked, weighed and banded for shipment. For each pound of copper produced in electro-winning, 1.5 pounds of sulfuric acid is regenerated for subsequent use in leaching. This technology is proven and widely used with 30% of world copper production being generated in this way.
The Emerald Isle Mine was originally operated as a joint venture between the United States Bureau of Mines and El Paso Natural Gas as an ‘in-situ leach’ experiment, one of the first conducted in the United States.
Location, Access and Infrastructure:
The Emerald Isle mine is located in northwestern Arizona approximately 15 miles northwest of Kingman. It is reached by following Highway 93 northwest from Kingman and then turning east just south of the town of Santa Claus and following a gravel road to the mine.
The Project is fully developed for operation. Approximately $2.6 million have been expended to date on the development of the mine, processing facilities and infrastructure. Prior to restart of operations, additional capital of $676,000 will be required to complete rehabilitation of existing facilities to ‘like new’ condition and to expand the existing solvent extraction and electro-winning plants to produce 15,000 pounds per day of cathode copper. This estimate assumes that the project will be mined by a contract miner who will receive a fixed payment per ton of material mined and that this contractor will furnish the required equipment for mining at his cost. Currently, the project has installed approximately 200,000 Ft2 of lined leach pad, lined PLS collection pond, a lined raffinate pond, solvent extraction and electro-winning plants, office, shop, warehouse and laboratory.
Prior to restarting operations, the company plans to connect to the local power grid to reduce the cost of electricity and simplify plant operations. Ample water is available for operations. The company has right-of-way permits to three water wells and also leases another from which water is currently available. This lease may be renewed in perpetuity.
Property Ownership/Legal:
The Emerald Isle property consists of 7 unpatented lode claims and 15 mill-site claims and 3 well site claims in sections 22 and 27, Townships 23N, R18W, Wallipai District, Mohave County, Arizona (Figure 1). The total area owned by SGV Resources at the Emerald Isle property amounts to approximately 154 acres.
There are no royalties or other residual interests to any third parties.
History:
The Emerald Isle mining operation was originally developed as a quasi-Joint Venture between the U.S. Bureau of Mines (U.S.B.M.) and the mining division of El Paso Natural Gas.
The government underwrote the development of the project to expand its background in the leaching of oxide copper ores. It was thought that the operation would more than pay for the study, which it did. It operated successfully until 1973, when the Bureau determined that its research objectives had been achieved. In addition to extensive acid leach tests, it had conducted a number of in-situ leaching tests and was satisfied with the results. It assigned its interest in the project to El Paso and testing continued privately.
El Paso drilled the bottom of the pit with a ‘tight pattern’ and blasted the exposed ore. Recovery wells were drilled and in-situ leaching was conducted for a short period until operations ceased in early 1974. The project was shut down due to high costs associated with the production of copper precipitate and subsequent treatment and refining charges.
The Emerald Isle Mine was purchased outright in 1980 by TSC Enterprises from El Paso Mining and Milling. SGV Resources purchased the mine and plants from Western Consolidated Resources (formerly TSC Enterprises) for a combination of cash and stock in 2004.
During its ownership of the property, TSC Enterprises modified the processing technology, including heap leaching, solvent extraction and electro-winning to produce cathode copper. Construction was completed in 1995 and the project operated successfully until early 1996 at which time copper prices declined to the point where it was not making a significant return. The project was shut down to conserve the reserves until the price of copper improved.
The U.S. Bureau of Mines reports indicate that a total of 1,400,000 tons were mined grading 1.0% copper during its ownership of the property. They reported copper recovery of 80% which correlates with the copper grade and tonnage of the tailings pile. An additional 235,000 pounds of copper as cathode copper was produced by TSC Enterprises following completion of the SX/EW plants.
The tailings produced by El Paso/U.S. Bureau of Mines are stored on site and contain 0.2% copper, or four pounds of copper per ton of tailings. SGV plans to re-process these tailings early in the operation to recover approximately 5.0 million pounds of copper through agitation leaching and decantation of solutions followed by mixing with pregnant solutions from the leach heaps.
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