Kerr Sulphurets Mitchell

Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell (KSM) is an active mine exploration project 65 km northwest of Stewart, British Columbia (1,545 km northwest of Vancouver, British Columbia).[1][2] The property is 100% owned by Toronto-based Seabridge Gold. Denver-based royalty company Royal Gold owns a 2% net smelter return royalty on the mine. Since May 2011, the project has also been called Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell-Iron Cap due to the addition of significant reserves from the Iron Cap region.

Boundary between the KSM property and Pretium Resource's Snowfield-Brucejack project and the road connecting them to Barrick Gold's Eskay Creek mine. The large land impressions that can be seen running through the Kerr and Sulphurets properties are glaciers (Sulphurets Glacier, Mitchell Glacier), icefields and lakes (Brucejack Lake is to the right just outside the area shown).[3]

When operational it will feature three open-pit mines, a processing plant and a tailings facility.[4] It is the largest undeveloped gold deposit in Canada and one of the world's biggest copper-gold porphyry deposits.[5][6] Though 2P reserves are significant (39 million ounces of gold, 214 million ounces of silver, 9.9 billion pounds of copper and 257 million pounds of molybdenum) they only represent about 65% of the mine's total resource of each metal.[6][7][8] The mines have a 52-year mine life (up from the 37 year estimate in 2009) and in the first seven years gold production costs are estimated to have been $105/oz.[9] Environmental/geological assessment was done by Rescan and Wardrop (other Rescan projects include Pueblo Viejo and Ekati).[4] All of the proven reserves and 75% of the proven + probable reserves are in the Mitchell Valley. Although the area's pyritic gossans have been clearly visible for a while, mining has never been attempted before.[10]

It neighbors Pretium Resources’ Snowfield project (previously owned by Silver Standard Resources). Snowfield has reserves of 25.9 million ounces for gold, 3 billion pounds for copper, 75.8 million ounces for silver and 258.3 million pounds for molybdenum.[7] Barrick Gold's Eskay Creek Mine is 20 km northwest of KSM.[1]

  1. ^ a b "Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell Project Project Description" (PDF). 2011.
  2. ^ "KSM (Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell) Project - Public Comment Invited on Proposed Scope of the Environmental Assessment". 2010-06-01.
  3. ^ http://wikimapia.org/p/00/01/76/48/91_big.jpg [dead link]
  4. ^ a b "KSM Project". Retrieved 2011-07-17.
  5. ^ "American Creek Sees Gold in Seabridge's Plans". 2010-01-13. Archived from the original on 2011-10-06.
  6. ^ a b "Seabridge sells royalty option on massive KSM project to Royal Gold". 2011-06-17.
  7. ^ a b "Golden plans coming together in BC for Pretium". 2011-05-12.
  8. ^ "Seabridge Gold Inc 2010 Annual Report" (PDF). 2011.
  9. ^ Cite error: The named reference miningmagazine was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  10. ^ "Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell: GEOLOGY". Retrieved July 27, 2011.