Page 24 Employees contractors and com munity leaders continue to wait patiently as Glencore determines whether the historic Kidd Creek mine will continue production In the meantime the company s massive Highway 101 metallurgical complex is drawing strategic atten tion thanks to a study Glencore is undertaking with Monarch Gold a small Quebecbased gold miner As it stands now Kidd Creek the deepest base metals mine in the western hemisphere just north of T immins is ofcially slated to stop production some time by the end of 2022 That announcement was made by the company several years ago However the timeframe took a dif ferent turn in mid 2018 when news broke that exploratory drillin g in the deepest part of the mine had turned up promising mineralization includ ing gold but Glencore isnt a gold miner Company ofcials quickly con frmed that the deep exploration program was real but they re mained tightlipped on any details At the time Mining Life reported that the mineralization was impres sive enough according to multiple sources to suggest the life of mine LOM could be extended for anoth er 68 years of production The challenge however continues to include a number of obstacles Kidd Life of Mine hasnt budged However not the least of which is engineer ing extending the massive ven tilation system to an even greater depth and the economics of com modity prices The ofcial response from com pany ofcials on Life of Mine is as follows Kidd Operations is con tinuing to focus on optimising their operations to ensure that they can safely operate in the most cost ef fcient manner At this time there is no ofcial change to their Life of Mine which is still ofcially end of 2022 said the company in a writ ten response to Mining Life Which still begs the question if the orebody is indeed open at depth but it contains gold who or which company might take an interest in the entire complex The Kidd Creek mine and metal lurgical complex has gone through a slate of owners over its lifetime The original orebody was discov ered in 1963 by the T exas Gulf Sulfur Company After a series of mergers and acquisitions that saw the proftable multibillion dol lar copperzinc operation change hands to the Canada Development Corporation then Falconbridge followed by Xstrata and fnally Glencore in 2013 it has reached a tipping point where the multibillio n dollar concentrator complex now holds the keys to the kingdom Can part or all of the complex be converted to gold production One clue might be in the answer pro vided to Mining Life in the written response we received for this pub lication Question Given the MOU with the Quebec gold miner to study the possibility of processing their ore at the Kidd smelter is the company Glencore now going forward or in the recent past exploring other smelter agreements for the circuit that is apparently idle Answer While Monarch Gold is funding 100 of the W asamac study Kidd Operations is support ing the study by providing access to technical information and to the concentrator site Glencore re mains open to discussing business options that can optimize its Kidd Operation assets They have par ticipated in opportunistic conversa tions in the past and will continue to do so Any gold miners in the area which include multiple companies would not lose sight of the fact that the Kidd concentrator has access to a rail system water gas hydro oxy gen and more importantly a tailin gs infrastructure to support ongoing production As for the Kidd mine itself Mining Life wanted to know if the project has been given a specifc name This exploration project is targeting By Kevin V incent Page 24 MLEN SPRING 2020 Contd on pg 26