Galore Creek Will Go Ahead...Eventually

By 250 News

Prince George, B.C. - "We will build this mine" that was the bottom line from Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, the  CEO of Nova Gold, one half of the Galore Creek Project.

He made that announcement this morning at the Natural Resource Forum in Prince George. It was a packed house for his  presentation, so much so that  an extra 70  seats had to be  set up to handle the  crowd.

The Galore  Creek project  is a rich  project with:

• 15 bilion pounds of copper,
• 14 million ounces of gold
• 200 million ounces of silver

It also  holds promise for  thousands of jobs in construction  and  hundreds more  when the mine is in operation.

The  project  is all on hold because of  rising  costs of materials,  increased costs for the  costruction of the dam to handle the tailings and  the rising value of the Canadian  dollar. When the decision was made to  stop the project,  there were  800 people in 7 camps working on the site.

With 10 permanent  bridges, and 20 temporary bridges already built and  66 kilometres of road constructed, the only thing  being done now is the completion of the constructionof a section of road.

"We are committed to building this mine, the time line for a new plan is 12 to 18 months  We are  committed to  Northern B.C." 

The public private partnership to build the  power line is still in place and the $158 million for that  project is "still on the table."  He asked the province to continue to work  towards the permitting of the  Highway 37 power lines.

There is a new development plan being developed and Van Nieuwenhuyse  says   its like they are starting with a fresh slate and they are looking at all  possible optins, including  piping materials to  another site  and  set up a  tailings pond there, "There are a lot of options, a lot of possibilities."

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