Why Waihi’s gold & silver mine wants to keep digging

Published Nov 28, 2024, 8:50 PM

[VIDEO EPISODE ON YOUTUBE & SPOTIFY] OceanaGold wants to keep mining under conservation land on Waihi’s coastline to keep its operation going for another decade. Could controversy derail their investment?

The information provided in this program is of a general nature and is not intended to be personalized financial advice. We encourage you to seek appropriate advice from a qualified professional to suit your individual circumstances. We're taking you inside this massive gold mine. We're a Canadian company plans to make the most of our economy's minerals moment and expand this operation, but could controversy consume their investment.

Since about twenty seventeen in Earnest we've been with the permission of the Department of Conservation establishing drill sites.

So one million ounces that could give you how many more years, if not decades on this operation if you're allowed to go ahead with it.

The mining phase is in the order of a decade of mining.

We're going across a bit further. This will probably start.

Going anything to get to the value they.

Correct yep, so that spire us to that's God left again there getting dizzy.

So this is Edward Denn.

We're tur one hundred.

And fifty meters underground the Corimandel town called Wayhi, where the Toronto listed company Oceana Gold digs for gold and silver.

How do you know you want to go in that direction. How do you know this.

Gold for gold?

He roll's one.

There would have been the inspiration for being done that.

You've seen them up in the office.

So they presult say it spelled all year. Heare we get that.

It started digging these tunnels in two thousand and six and it's still going deeper. The Mining Safety lead took us right into its operation to understand exactly what it's doing under the earth droning.

Day are here?

I could Roy doc missus Madison Nadian?

Nice to me? Day Can you tell us what you're doing?

What I'm doing?

What I do?

Is it dorvia? Yeah? Yeah?

And what you're doing just grab support development filling the last thing is it? Who does with derision?

Yep?

How long have you been working here?

For our seven years?

That's nine for seven years, that's nine seven eas Yet how do you find the mining industry?

I love it? Yeah, yes, coolers, So it's the beast job. There's a beat job of the head most society. You mean it's a bit different, challenging, but yeahs ok. He's great gold for a great course. But probably in New Zealand they say it start up on scale with what's a nauty But if I have been.

There, like up with you.

In terms of what you were doing before.

This's like how much of an opportunity and what kind of lifestyle can thissk of you that something else couldn't.

Well Financially, it's been well. We were able to buy a house and which in my last job was was single income with a fair It was pretty much possible to try to live end save. So get us something messive for us.

Oh awesome, are well done?

Tissue is as we kept driving down, we made it to the bottom of the market head.

This is massive pit.

Yep.

Yeah, I feel like.

I'm walking on the moon. So this used to be a fully operational open mind.

Correct, yep.

I can't see from here, but we've got workshops and crashes and things all around the surface up there, and they used to come in around and down and into the bottom of the pit here and mind that.

But there was this landslide, right, So since that happened or before when you saw that coming.

Yeah, they had people they knew because of monitoring, they knew this. They knew there was movement and things were going to happen, and everyone was taken out of the pit well before anything occurred, and since then we've then mine access and through to the pit as you've just come out of.

So the underground mine is actually under our feet. It keeps going.

Yes, it might sound like a stupid question, but how does this remain stable when people are mining underneath this?

The ground itself is inherently stable. Okay, the rock structures they will stay there, and you take a tunnel through it, the rock structure will stay there. The stresses move our rock. Doctors are probably much better to explain how that all works now.

When you call them the doctors.

Yeah, yeah, the geotechnical engineers, they're they're the ones to talk all about how that that works. Yeah, but we're filling this up with waste. So all the waste material we used to cart to the surface, we've got a big stockpile up there. But it's obviously much more efficient to bring it out here because eventually we've got to take it back in underground and fill up the old voids.

So all of the tunnels that you've dug out, all of that rock you've now started to fill.

Martha, Yep, we use stockpile and then eventually, once you're done mining that you would use all that rock.

Ye.

Progressively, as we've finished an area, we'll go back and fill that area in consent process to fill the voids.

So what is the life of the underground mine?

I started here in two twelve, but two thousand and six they started mining underground here obviously the open pit and the underground mine we're going in conjunction. And then they've stopped mining prior to the fall, and obviously continue underground. And yeah, I think as far as the life of mine goes, every mine is like, well, we've got five years. We've got five years. We've got five years. If you look at many of the mines around the world, it's they're always looking at we're going to be closing soon. I hang on, noe, we've got another five years, another five years. Obviously, as you go further underground, we can do more exploration, find more gold, and potentially extend the life of the morning.

How long have you been working here for Craik.

August twenty twelve. I started so, yeah, moved up from McCraw so I was standado Shanna Gold.

Then awesome, thank you so much for taking us around. I really appreciate that.

Not a problem while underground gives a sense of the stakes. You need to go higher up to see the scale of the entire operation. Oceana Gold's New Zealand legal executive Alison Paul is coming up in the air with us. Oceana purchased the Wiki mine in twenty fifteen. At that time it only had a life.

Of less than three years. It's extended it well beyond that.

Now, how are you allowed to dig upet that large on the edge a residential areas turned into a pit thirty five years ago and.

At that time there was a lot less town than there is now.

The town actually built up to the pit as opposed to they dug into a town.

That's right, and being a combination.

Of boat really its growth is now extended to exploring for gold under this and nearby forest a popular hiking.

Area in the region.

Land that's administered by the Department of Conservation. So this is all dockland, all of this forest, Corimandal Forest Park that's right, all Coramander Forest Park.

So this is one of the drill sites here. Can you explain the operations that you're.

Doing on this area through sites like that currently?

Yeah, So the area is what we've called the forest Careponga area, and that's what we've made the ore body. Since about twenty seventeen in Earnest we've been with the permission of the Department of Conservation, establishing drill sites in order to drill holes down into the ground and understand more about the your body that is there, and that is aimed at firming up your understanding of the extent and the grade and the physical properties of your body, so.

Effectively at the moment your pre pre feasibility. All of this drilling is to help you create a feasibility.

Study as correct. So once you've applied things like the economic factors, you're able to raise it to illegal nine as a reserve. And that can only happen when you've reached a press feasibility stage. And that's our intention in December when they're going to release a report to our shareholders, which we'll be targeting exactly there, so we'll be talking about a reserve for we release that reporter recepper roughly, how confident are you that you could extract decent quality goal from that? That's the big question that we answer in a pre feasibility report. But as I sit here today and I say there we go to be releassing a prebeasibility rapport with a Maiden Missouri in December. That tells you the level of confidence that we've reached it this ever time.

So far, it's indicated one million ounces of higher grade gold could be under the ground, so it's proposing digging two new tunnels to get to it, which would go under this farmland that the company has already purchased. But mining is not without its controversy, and the fact that this is conservation land and home to a native frog species is significant for the environmental effort against it. When we landed back on the ground, Allison and I sat down to discuss why it's pushing ahead with its investment and the expected payoff.

Allison, thank you so much for having us here. I really appreciate it.

It's great to have you here.

Let's start by talking about the existing Wye operation. What we've seen here today tell us about the scale of it. You also have McCrae, which is the biggest gold mine in the country.

But how does why he here compare.

So the company Oceana Gold started at McRae's seventy five years ago and that does remain the biggest gold mine in the country. It's essentially an open pit gold mine with some underground mining here at why He. Oceanic Gold acquired this mine off Newmont at the time in twenty fifteen, so we've been here coming up to ten years, and that whole time we've been underground mining. So there is quite a well known open pit in the middle of why He Martha Pit that has been not mined at the time that we've had why He mine. So we're mining under Martha pitt in remnants of historic mining from over one hundred years ago, and that Martha underground mine will take us through to something like twenty twenty eight or beyond on our current estimations, but those kinds of dates are always moving.

So if that's the life of the mind, then what do you things sort of total production or at least annual production leading up to twenty twenty eight.

Could be from the existing Wyhe operation.

So the existing operation this year is targeting between fifty five to seventy five thousand ounces of gold and then a whole lot of silver. We produce more silver than we do gold out of the y He mine, so that compares with McCrae's for example, which typically targets between one hundred and thirty to one hundred and fifty or more thousand ounces of gold a year. So here at y he that is the kind of production that we're looking for, looking to increase that somewhat, but that out twenty twenty eight at the moment is what we're aiming for. And then we're looking to bring on at some point this additional discovery, the Fury Care Poga all body, which we've been exploring since about twenty seventeen, and we're taking that through into the development phase.

I'm definitely keing to talk to you about all of that and more detail. But if we just talk about the existing environment, the climate for minerals and the economic potential for it. The price of gold at least is record highs. The price of silver is certainly rising too. How do you think about the climate and the market for commodities like that at the moment and the opportunity that provides for a company like this.

So here in why we are employing over three hundred and fifty people and the expiration that we're pursuing is employing over another hundred people. So that is a great opportunity not just for the mind but for the people of why he and I think at the moment that is the focus of some of what's been proposed by the current government around things like the Fast Track Approvals Bill. So the government has identified an opportunity to bring on additional economic activity through things like the primary sector and the resources sector, which is part of that. So that is the opportunity for a Carepona in terms of gold production. Initially a development project, and it will be for some years before it starts producing gold. There's a lot of tunneling that has to happen before we're able to reach that or body, and at that point it will become another producing mind that will add to the production that we're seeing here at Martha Underground, or takeover or something along those lines, depending on the timelines.

At one point, I do want to talk to you about the prospect and opportunity that that could provide in terms of the goal that you could extract from that area.

But what if it doesn't happen.

There is enormous controversy around this project and you've barely even got started. You know, you're certainly not extracting anything yet. That could derail this investment and prospect entirely for this company.

Nothing is guaranteed, and I think the way a business like ours has to respond to that is to listen and to do our work and our consultation and the technical assessments we need to do to meet the expectations of New Zealanders. So the for Ay Cure Ponga opportunity is under conservation land. One of the things we've been clear on from the outset is that we wouldn't be putting any surface mining activities in the conservation estate. So we're going to start tunneling from a pece of farmland that is next to the conservation forest Park. We'll tunnel underground and we will tunnel towards the old body from there and stay underground except for some vent sites vent shafts that are going to rise to the surface. So that's the first thing we have to respond to expectations. We're doing a lot of technical assessments to make sure that our impacts stay underground and don't have a noticeable impact on conservation land on the surface, so that we think addresses some of the controversy that surrounds a project like ours. And you can understand the controversy because New Zealanders justifiably are very protective in particular of conservation at state and I don't think any of us would have it any other way. So this project we'll have to meet those expectations that what's on the surface remains well looked after.

There must be some pretty high confidence that's come out of those early studies to make you want to proceed with something that does have controversy surrounding it.

Yes, it's started life, as all minds do, as a discovery and since twenty seventeen in Earnest, we've been doing expiration drilling, so that's with the permission of the Department of Conservation, and we've been drilling off about thirteen sites, including camps and helly pads and the like, and then we've added another site in March this year to that number. So that has got us to the point by the end of last year where we were able to say to our markets we've got a fairly good confidence level what is known as an indicated resource around about a million ounces of gold, and then we've got about another half million ounces at a kind of a less drilled out, lower level of confidence and since that time we've been looking to raise the amount of drilling we have of that all body to raise that confidence level some more. And we've also established another drill site to the south where we're really looking for the extent where the extent of the all body might be and whether it extends further. So we've been publishing results since that time that are showing that at the moment, we're continuing to find good grade mineralization that we're optimistic about and that we're looking at adding to our inventory.

One million ounces is why he annually today you currently produce what I think he said, fifty thousand or something, we.

Do about seventy five or so years guide on.

One million ounces.

That could give you how many more years, if not decades on this operation if you're allowed to go ahead with it.

Yeah, I think the development phase could be quite a few years to begin with, but then after that the mining phase is in the order of a decade of mining at the moment, and because you are always looking for further extent of the your body even when you're underground. Once you've established your tunnels, you're able to do more drilling from underground and what your experience often is that a mind keeps on going. So you establish your mind based on what you know at the time, and you have a level of optimism, and.

What about the quality of the gold and grams per ton out of that one million ounces, how does that compare to what you currently get out of Wayhei, or perhaps compare to mccraze.

So you need to appreciate that the grade of the gold that you target with an underground is always necessarily higher than the grade of the gold that you target with an open pit. So two very different operations. At mccraze, we're targeting less than one gram of gold per ton of war, whereas an underground will inevitably be more than that. The grade that we've got within our indicated resource at for a caraponger is fifteen point nine grams per ton compared to less than one, well compared to a very different operation being an open pit. But that's a massive defreessing mind it is. What you will find is that the grade often goes down as you start bringing more and more gold into your inventory that you're targeting. So you don't you aim to establish a cutoff grade, which is the point at which you decide that you're going to leave anything further and not mine it. And the kind of grade that you've got within a resource estimate is not always going to be or necessarily going to be reflective of what you're mine at. But certainly foreign care upomer is very promising all body, and we have been pursuing the development of our understanding of that to the point that we're going to be releasing a pre feasibility study in December which is going to, amongst other things, allow us to establish a reserve, a gold reserve and not just the resource that we've got at the moment, so that'll be happening in December.

Of course, the grade of gold that you would extract from an underground mind needs to be higher because it costs a hell of a lot more to operate an underground mind. It's a much bigger investment and more difficult than an open pit mind.

Is that correct?

That's right, And you're targeting in many cases different mineralization that is by its nature more concentrated from the kind of mineralization you target with an open pit, So there are a fundamental differences. But the cutoff grade is one of the things that is a difference between those two methods of mining.

So if we sum up all of those figures, then one million ounces potentially in this Whiting North project if it is at that grade of almost sixteen grands per ton of gold another decade on the life of this project, how much do you think this company could take if it sells that gold at near the record prices that gold hitting.

Now, well, that's something that even in a pre feasibility context, when we release the pre feasibility study, there will be some estimates of those kinds of numbers contained in that. At this point, it's fairly i would say conservative, or people would form the it was conservative relative to current goal price. But of course you're talking about a long term investment. So what you base your investment on isn't the spot price today, but more of a consensus price coming from everyone in this particular market gold investors, and you really establish a more conservative number. So the indicated resource that we've got, all the resource that we've got at the moment for a caraponga, is based on a seventeen fifty US dollar gold price, And to the degree that as a company at the moment that we talk about reserves, that's based on fifteen hundred gold price, so that's pretty conservative.

This morning I checked it, it's over twenty three hundred US see.

Yeah, so it is something that you obviously keep under advisement, and from time to time the company does make announcements and update the market as to our thinking on those consent numbers.

So remind me again when the pre feasibility study is due to come out, because you're currently in a pre pre feasibility study.

Process, right, Yeah, so that's going to be released on the eleventh of December Vancouver time.

We'll talk then.

Thank you so much for your time, Alison really appreciate it. Thank you.

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