Kemess North - NXG They are looking to turn it into an underground block cave operation. They will just start to mine the high grade section. It will only be 40% of the original planned Kemess North mine, but 40% is better than 0%.
Northgate is modeling a block cave operation with 1.4 million oz of gold and 500 million pounds of copper. Using the 12 year mine life they had for the open pit, that translates into about 120,000 oz gold and 40 million pounds of copper production per year from this underground mine. They can also use the existing mill at Kemess South, so not only does that save them money but it also speeds up the development time.
In order to develop a more detailed block caving model, Northgate is going to have to do additional resource definition drilling to enable a greater degree of confidence in the potential of the high-grade resource. An exploration budget of $3 million has been approved and diamond drilling is scheduled to commence 2010 summer....