Morice Land and Resource Management Plan

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Conclusion

Given the current activities and high mineral potential in the Morice LRMP area, there is a strong likelihood that further mine development will take place locally over the near-term (two to five year period), particularly if metal prices recover strongly, as anticipated, over the next twelve to eighteen months. However, it is difficult to determine if this mining will manifest itself as an underground operation.

Recommendations to the LRMP Table

Recommendation – The LRMP should consider zoning the areas around the Dome Mountain, Fireweed, and Silver Queen deposits as industrial use.

Recommendation - Access to these sites should be identified to reduce land use conflicts with non-industrial uses later.
Recommendation - Access to these sites for utilities should also be considered during land use designations.

Recommendation - Consideration should be made to account for the establishment of a training facility or training opportunities to provide potential mine developers with a local, skilled workforce.

Development of a Copper Smelter

Overview

In the Northwest the current Alcan aluminum plant in Kitimat serves as the only large regional metal processing facility. Kitimat draws on metal inputs from around the world and was only located in Kitimat because of the ability to access affordable hydroelectric power. With regards to local copper smelting, the Anyox copper smelting operation and mine was active for approximately the first thirty years of the 1900s and was located up Observatory Inlet south of Stewart.

T
Teck Cominco Inc, Smelter, Trail BC

he only other large smelter in BC is Teck Cominco’s integrated smelting and refining complex in Trail. This smelter has been operating almost continually for close to 100 years and processes more than 700,000 tonnes of concentrates each year, yielding a wide range of metals with the two major metals being zinc and lead. While this facility was once dependent on the nearby Sullivan mine it now draws on concentrate from Alaska, northwestern US and South America.
Two smaller metal refinery businesses also operates in British Columbia including Technic Inc. in Richmond that has a melting furnace for producing bars for precious metals and Thompson Creek Mining Co. at Fraser Lake that undertakes a flotation and roasting process to produce Mo concentrate and molybdic oxide.
Hydrometallurgical (a.k.a. Hydromet) operations use different refinement processes to extract copper form concentrate. While the end result is the same the processes used to extract the copper is somewhat different. Hydromet processes recover metallic copper directly from concentrate or leach solutions and do not require a traditional smelter. A recent test of this relatively new process was undertaken on the Gibraltar deposit (now closed) near Williams Lake. If hydromet proved to be an economical way of copper extraction in the Pacific Northwest, it might start a review of the province’s existing uneconomical deposits.
While hydromet operations may prove to be a worthy operation to explore, as yet this type of operations is still relatively new. With this in mind this analysis will focus solely on copper smelting.

Opportunity Analysis

The only operating mine in the study area is the Huckleberry Mine. This mine is a copper molybdenum producer located southwest of Houston on the shores of Tahtsa Reach. The mine is operated and partly owned by Imperial Metals of Vancouver. It continues to be challenged by ongoing low copper prices and the recent strengthening of the Canadian dollar. Mining plans may have to be revised to meet these challenges and may result in a shorter mine life. The copper concentrate is trucked to Stewart for shipment to Japan, while the molybdenum concentrate is trucked to and sold in Vancouver. Besides this active mine site the region also has many rich mineral deposits and there are several specific areas in the Morice Plan area that feature copper deposits.

Given the nature of copper smelters a long term and secure supply of concentrate would have to be assured with in the study area before a copper smelter would be considered.

Location Analysis

The development of a copper smelter will require the development of significant infrastructure. Several of these infrastructure factors will play against locating a sizeable facility in the Morice Planning area including:

Accesses to tide water - most copper smelter facilities are located on tidewater. Transportation of raw material in and finished product out is a global activity. The ability to directly access ocean transportation is a critical cost factor. Facilities such as Teck Cominco’s Trail smelter have been fortunate to survive away from tidewater but this has placed them at significant competitive disadvantage. Copper concentrate from BC’s largest copper mine, Highland Valley Copper, is almost exclusively sold to smelters in Asia.
Hydro Electricity Power - both Alcan and Teck Cominco are hydro electricity generators and have secured very affordable energy costs. Power is a key cost component of a smelter and would be a critical factor in locating a facility in the study area. Power arrangements such as those received by Alcan and Teck Cominco are unlikely again in BC.
Economies of Scale – copper smelters rely on economies of scale to achieve sustained affordability. As well, they typically require several hundred millions of dollars in investment to develop. In fact, Teck Cominco’s recent upgrade at the Trail smelter required over $270 million to upgrade and modernize their existing operation.

Besides the infrastructure issues that may arise, there are human resource and environmental issues that will likely be critical in selecting a smelter site, specifically:

Skilled Labour Force – a copper smelter could create upwards of a 1,000 direct jobs, many of which would be skilled trade’s people. The labour force in the Morice Plan area is small and would require considerable effort on the part of the operator to attract and train the appropriate labour force.
Competitive Wage Costs – Northwestern BC has a high level of unionized work force. Wage costs of operating a copper smelter would be compared to wage costs in other parts of the world, likely in Asia were most smelting growth has occurred recently. It is unlikely wage costs in the region will be competitive with Asian producers.
Environmental Considerations – Copper smelting creates several different types of air emissions including sulphur dioxide, arsenic, cadmium, lead, zinc, mercury, and antimony. As well, the processing also generates acid plant blow-down slurry and slag (iron sulphides and silica). Given these options if a smelting plant were to be considered in the Morice LRMP area it would need to undergo careful environmental considerations.

There are likely no suitable sites for traditional copper production in the study area, as well, at this time it would be challenging to demonstrate a sustainable supply of local concentrate from the region.

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