Cumberland completes Meadowbank feasibility study

Vancouver — Aspiring gold miner Cumberland Resources (CLG-T) has finally received the feasibility study for its wholly-owned Meadowbank project, located 70 km north of Baker Lake, Nunavut.

Following last year’s delay in finalizing the study, resulting in at least a year’s postponement to development plans, and sticker shock at the plus-$350-million capital cost estimate, Cumberland retrenched and launched a $4.7-million drill program focused on expansion of the deposit and the modelled open pits.

The company fine-tuned all aspects of project economics, specifically optimizing capital costs and planned gold production rates. The effort seems to have paid off. The feasibility study shows a pre-production capital expenditure of $300 million for the planned open-pit operation, at least 17% less than the previous estimate, along with an accelerated mining plan of 2.7 million tonnes-per-year, producing an average of 316,000 oz. gold annually over the life of the mine.

Additionally, modifications to open-pit scheduling and the construction of a 102-km all-season access road (versus a winter road) allow for improvements in project economics. The proposed conventional road from Baker Lake will mitigate redundancy of certain on-site infrastructure requirements and improve construction scheduling and ongoing operations costs.

The 25-km long Meadowbank trend contains greenstone belt associated gold mineralization within units of iron formation and sheared meta-volcanics.

Proven and probable open-pit reserves of 21.9 million tonnes grading 3.9 grams gold per tonne have been outlined in the Portage, Vault and Goose pits at Meadowbank. The project hosts a total measured and indicated resource of 23.3 million tonnes grading 4.4 grams gold, plus an additional 3.4 million tonnes of inferred resources averaging 4.3 grams gold. The six main deposits at the project (North Portage, Third Portage, Bay Zone, Goose Island, Vault and PDF) are all near surface and amenable to open-pit mining methods.

Cumberland president and CEO Kerry Curtis commented on planned work programs at Meadowbank: “Those open pits that we’ve designed, there are still resources beneath those pits. We’d like to do some scoping and see what kind of underground resources might be yielded.

“We still have the PDF deposit, up to the north, that wasn’t included in the feasibility; we’ll be scoping that one out and drilling it in the spring,” continued Curtis.

A draft environmental impact study has been submitted to the Nunavut Impact Review Board.

Curtis further explained that the next big hurdle is to permit the project, “so 2005 is going to be dedicated to that.”

Cumberland also holds part of the Meliadine gold project, located about 20 km north of Rankin Inlet in Nunavut. A 22% carried interest is held in Meliadine West and a 50% joint venture interest in the Meliadine East with project partner Comaplex Minerals (CMF-T).

With 54.8 million shares outstanding, Cumberland sports a $104-million market capitalization at its recent $1.90 per share trading price. Kinross Gold (K-T) owns about 14% of Cumberland’s shares.