Vale commits $23 million for diamond drilling, other work related to Thompson mine extension project – by Ian Graham (Thompson Citizen – February 10, 2021)

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Vale Manitoba’s proposed Thompson mine extension project doesn’t have the green light from the company’s board of directors just yet but $23 million has been allocated towards it over the next six months in an en effort to collect more information on which to base a final decision.

Some of the money will be spent on diamond drilling to try to determine the precise extent of the footwall deep and hanging wall ore body, Manitoba Operations general manager Franco Cazzola told the Thompson Chamber of Commerce at their Feb. 10 meeting.

“Our project right now sits at 50 per cent inferred and 50 per cent indicated [resources],” Cazzola said. “When you have an inferred resource … the ore body is not quite as well-defined as you’d like it to be and so in order to to that you actually have to do more diamond drilling, pull more cores.”

With the next few weeks, he said, five surface drilling rigs will be put to work on Vale’s property.

“Never before … in my 33 years of mining have I ever see five surface rigs drilling at such a pace that’s going to happen to prove out the resource from inferred to indicated,” said Cazzola.

For the rest of this article: https://www.thompsoncitizen.net/news/thompson/vale-commits-23-million-for-diamond-drilling-other-work-related-to-thompson-mine-extension-project-1.24280427