@Helios11 all good, not worth continuing this conversation further since I don't think we'll come to any agreement. I've commented on your concerns ala PMET disclosure and addressed them above; the data was largely ignored, which is fine. A main point of mine was that many of the posts were just factual lies about Corvette, as many of the posts above. It's easy for any reader to see many of these posts have no factual basis. Text/data has been cherry picked to fit a narrative. No one will provide any weight to these points/opinions.
There have been more comments about PMET Cree relationship, time to develop a mine, and it's resource in comparison to PMET on a market cap/ton valuation basis. Let's investigate.
Cree relationship: I know PMET started discussions with a Cree a long time ago. They have questions that PMET has been tackling, especially through environmental baseline monitoring. You can read about the questions Cree have in the ESIA doc. Is the relationship perfect? Probably not. WR1 currently has partnered with Eskan (Cree owned) for the potential road to Renard, but that is not partnering with Cree for mine development. There will be many questions from the Cree (as there should be) when it comes to the proposed Adina mine. WR1 just recently started environmental monitoring, and are well behind PMET in that regard, that will be key in Cree relations.
Time for mine development: my main question about permitting timelines is also how long it will take to get partial lake drainage approved at CV5 (HADD permit). But many of these (thousands) are issued per year. It took the Renard mine 3 years to receive an HADD permit from submission date.
For perspective, the current timeline for construction of the road from Adina to Renard per the La Grande Alliance, is not targeted to commence any time before 2030. WR1 has stated they want to expedite this timeline, but I'm skeptical this will work.
For perspective, if PMET permitting went perfectly (they are way ahead in their environmental monitoring studies and kicked off environmental permitting in Nov 2023), they could be producing late 2028. Will that happen? I'm doubtful, there will likely be delays, but the timelines for HADD permitting in particular, suggest it's possible (HADD authorization by 2027).
I remind those not familiar with the James Bay, Corvette and Adina are in the middle of nowhere, especially Adina. Renard was built for DMS processing, but was not built for shipping out large tonnages of concentrate. Diamonds that were concentrated, were flown out by plane (<0.5 tons of diamonds/year). WR1 will have to truck unprocessed material to Renard via a new road, then truck concentrate south via route 167 which requires repairs, or complete more road construction north towards the Trans-Taiga and move concentrate north. They are trading lower capex for higher opex, but I do have my skepticism about whether Renard will even make sense long-term as the concentration site given they need to move large tonnage. Infrastructure is key in the James Bay.
Resource size: PMET had a pit-constrained resource (43-101), WR1 had a non-pit constrained resource (JORC). These differences are important. Here is the CV5 pegmatite ore body:
The CV5 pegmatite is steeply dipping, and a pit shell can be constructed such that minimal waste rock must be mined to mine the ore body (low waste/ore ratio).
Most of CV5 can easily be mined and fits into the pit shell. Only two other deposits have resources predominantly hosted in a single dike: Greenbushes and Manono. These are world class assets for this reason (low waste/ore) and are extremely low on the cost curve. Corvette is in that class.
Stacked pegmatites present additional challenges and much higher opex (much higher waste/ore ratios). Below is the Adina deposit from the MRE. Half of the resource is in the top pegmatite (main zone) and half the resource is on the lower pegmatite (footwall zone), these zones are separated by ~100-150m depth. I challenge WR1 posters to draw an open pit shell around the two ore bodies, since comparisons are being made on the suggestion that WR1 will mine their current 59 Mt resource. Waste/ore ratios will be significantly higher at Adina, no getting around that. They could potentially make a small open pit and mine the main zone at shallow depths, thus the resource is <25 Mt of mineable material (perhaps attempt underground mining for the footwall zone). Or make a larger open pit to tap the main and footwall zones, but there will be a ton of waste they must process. Considerations they are no doubt thinking about on an opex basis. The deeper thinner slivers of the main and footwall zones that are steeply dipping will likely not be mined.
(20min delay)
