Ann: $2.5m Placement to Accelerate Drilling at Equador Project, page-49

No worries so let's use those figure work out how much Overburden
would have to be removed,
BEFORE WA1 makes a cent and hits Paydirt:

3.5km x 1.5km x 50metres.

That works out to
3500 x 1500 x 50 metres
which equals:
262 500 000 M3 of Overburden to be Removed !!!!

262.5 Million Tonnes approx. of Overburden to be removed.

That's a lot of work !!!!
Which would be very expensive.

But wait there's still more,
Clearly one cannot have vertical sides or it would collapse,
So needs to be increased by at least 50% to allow for the Taper Required:

That's 393 Million Tonnes Of Overburden to be Removed !!!!

Now how much do you think that would actually cost to do?