Pretivm Resources Inc. (PVG)

[silver100]

Pretivm PXZRF.PK PVG.TO +0.55 $9.22 +6.3%

Seabridge has the nearby KSM project and a market cap of 1.17 billion

Pretivm has Brucejack AND Snowfield and a market cap 788 million

Mining WILL be done here!

Pretium eyes high grade underground gold-silver mine in BC

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page103118?oid=128613&sn=Detail

While it continues to advance its massive Snowfield project, Pretium Resources has outlined an underground mine at the adjacent Brucejack deposit in BC with some truly bonanza gold/silver intercepts.


HALIFAX -

As promised earlier in the year Pretium Resources (TSX: PVG) has delivered a scoping study of a 135,000-ounce, gold-silver underground mine at its Brucejack deposit near Stewart, northern BC.

It is a second track for Pretium, which has also outlined a hefty, capital intensive open-pit mine comprising the lower grade resources at Brucejack and the adjacent Snowfield deposit. The relatively lithe, but high grade, underground option gives Pretium a path to production that could be much closer at hand in comparison to the time needed to develop the giant Snowfield sibling.

In its scoping study Pretium sees building a standalone, diesel-powered mine and mill at Brucejack with capital costs of $282 million and a 16-year mine life. The first 10 years would be the richest in terms of precious metal production with Pretium churning out 173,000 ounces gold and 1.1 million ounces silver a year.

By the end of its final year the mine would have produced some 2.2 million ounces gold and 15 million ounces silver. Pretium would pull 8.42 million tonnes of rock from the ground with mill feed grades estimated at 8.58 g/t gold and 73.47 g/t silver.

In a base case scenario, assuming a $1,100 price of gold and $21 price of silver, net present value is $662 million, discounted at five percent. Accordingly payback would come after about four years.

The underground project outline is in stark contrast to the bulk tonnage Snowfield-Brucejack project, where last year Silver Standard, which previously owned the project, sketched out a 120,000-tonne-per-day mine, that would cost about $3.5 billion to build, but also produce nearly 700,000 ounces of gold a year, along with significant amounts of silver, copper, molybdenum and rhenium, over a 27-year mine life.

Though Pretium has lately focused its efforts, especially in the field, on the Brucejack underground scenario, with that astronomical level of potential production centered around Snowfield, Pretium has clearly not lost its appetite to go after the mega deposit.

In fact the project could get bigger. Recently Pretium announced it had signed a cooperation agreement with Seabridge Gold to consider, among other things, the economics of combining Pretium's Snowfield with Seabridge's KSM project next door.

While to date KSM and Snowfield have been considered as separate projects, they are a contiguous deposit. Recognizing this, both companies want to know the possible upside of mining KSM and Snowfield together in a single super-pit.

The agreement also give Pretium an important access-way to its Brucejack project over Seabridge's KSM property.

Snowfield aside, in terms of exploration Brucejack remains Pretium's focus for now. Pretium says a 50,000 metre drill program there is underway, the thrust of which is to better delineate and further expand the deposit. Initial drilling showed some really remarkable high grade gold/silver intersections in six holes and part of the programme is being designed to show what continuations there may be of this particularly rich area.