Sultan aims to restart B.C. tungsten mine

Vancouver – Sultan Minerals (SUL-V) wants to take advantage of buoyant commodity prices by bringing a former British Columbia tungsten mine back into production within the next two years.

Before it closed in 1972, the Jersey-Emerald mine ranked among the world’s largest producers of tungsten, an metallic element that is renouned for its durability and can be used to make everything from high speed cutting tools, to filaments for electric lamps.

Known as Wolfram in many parts of the world, tungsten is extracted from wolframite, scheelite and other minerals.

During the Second World War, the Jersey-Emerald mine was a supplier of strategic metals to the U.S. military and was operated by both the Canadian government and Placer Dome, a company that was recently acquired by Barrick Gold.

Now, Sultan wants to revive the mine in order to finance exploration for other minerals in B.C.’s Kootenay region, including gold and molybdenum.

In keeping with that plan, the company has issued an initial resource estimate for the Jersey-Emerald property.

The estimate by Giroux Consultants shows that an area between two mined-out zones contains a measured and indicated resource of 2.5 million tonnes, averaging 0.37% cent tungsten oxide.

The same area also contains an additional inferred resource of 1.2 million tonnes of 0.39% tungsten oxide, according to the report, Sultan said.

The estimates are based on the results of recent and historical drilling.Sultan officials said they are pleased with the results of the Giroux study.

The resource is comparable in tonnage and grade with many of the world’s largest tungsten mines, the company said, adding that the potential exists for expansion of the resource in historically mined areas and surrounding terrain.

“I think we could be in production within two years,” said Marc Lee, a spokesman for Sultan.

If the company succeeds, it will compete with existing producers such as North American Tungsten(NTC-V), which operates a tungsten mine in the Northwest Territories.

It is among producers who stand to benefit from a tight market, which has sent tungsten prices soaring as high as US$260 per tonne from around $65 three years ago.

The jump in prices is driven by strong demand in China as well as the depletion of stockpiled material in the former Soviet Union.

Sultan says it has been advised to launch a preliminary scoping study to determine the requirements necessary for permitting of the site for mining.

In addition to tungsten, the company has also outlined a molybdenum zone on the Jersey-Emerald property, hosting an indicated resource of 28,000 tonnes, averaging about 1% molybdenum. It said molybdenum grades on the property are sufficiently significant to warrant underground mining methods.

It has also been suggested that Sultan dewater some of the former mine workings and conduct further drilling, work that is expected to cost $4.1 million, the company said

Cash flow from a future tungsten mine, it said, can be used to finance exploration Sultan’s Kena gold property, about 100 kilometres further north in Rossland, B.C.