Recently, Conuma Coal approached Teck and Anglo American to purchase their coal stockpiles that have been sitting around for years.
“They currently have no plans to deal with these,” says John Schadan, President of Conuma. “So, while they figure out their business plans going forward, we’ve got together with them and developed a plan that we would buy them, then we would pick them up and haul them over to our Wolverine plant and process them.”
He says the coal is similar to the coal they have been producing at Wolverine, it fits with the company’s model, and it helps clean up the environment. “I think it’s a win win win all around with this initiative.”
Schadan says the company is looking at approximately 350,000 tonnes between the two mines. While the final contracts have yet to be signed, he’s expecting that will be completed soon. “We’re just finalizing the commercial arrangements with both companies. They’re very willing and very motivated. Again, on the regulatory side, we’ve got approvals to manage all of this, there’s no mining going to be involved. We are just digging up stockpiles.”
That’s the good news. The bad news? The quickest way to the Wolverine is via the highway. There are two routes, says Schadan. One would be to go up and over the Mast Creek road. While this is not a lot longer (about 1 km further from the Trend Mine to Wolverine load-out, and about 3 km shorter from Quintette), it would be a lot slower (about 25 percent slower from Trend, and 20 percent from Quintette), and involves going up and over the Mast Creek Road, which would use a lot more gas.
The preferred route is via Highway 52/29, right past town. Schadan says the company will be hauling around 180 loads a day, around the clock, for about two months, starting in July. “We are going to have health and safety and oversight and management of the trucking, we’re going to protect —to the extent that we can—that they follow the speed limits on the highways and roads.”
The trucks, he says, will be covered, to reduce dust. The company is also planning on temporarily installing a flashing speedometer signs for the for the trucks when they approached Tumbler Ridge, and the truckers will do what they can to reduce brake noises coming down the hill to Flatbed. “We’re going to try and make sure it just sounds like normal highway traffic, as best as we can.”
He says the company will keep the Mast Creek option open as a back-up, “but at this point in time, we are planning to keep it on the highway. It will be the quickest, it’ll be the safest, and it will be the most productive.”
This is one of a series of make-work projects the company is doing as it makes its transition from the Perry Creek pit to the Mount Hermann pit.
There are two reasons. First, Schadan says, it was looking like there would be a one year gap as the mine transitioned pits as the mines act Permit for Hermann has been delayed. “We already knew that Perry Creek pit was running out of coal; we needed to find other sources of coal to make sure we didn’t have a one year gap.”
He says the company has managed to get that down to about two months. While the mine has received its Environmental Assessment Certificate, the company is hoping to get the Mines Act Permit later this year.
The company has also received an amendment to do a pushback on one of the pits. “We’ve looked at all the finished high walls within Perry Creek, and we came up with a pushback of one of the pits. This means that we’ve got a high wall, and we go back up top, and we mine another slice of it, so to speak.”
The drawback to this? A lot of overburden. “It comes up with a very high stripping ratio,” he says. “There’s lots of waste we’ve got to move for a little coal. But our engineering team has done a great job and we have worked with the regulator to do a quick amendment. It’s within the permitted area of Perry Creek. It’s within our disturbance area, so we aren’t clearing any more trees or doing anything like that. We were able to get a quick approval for that.”
He says there’s another pushback planned as well.
This will allow the people who work at the mine to keep working while the Mines Act Permit approval process continues.
The other reason to keep the coal flowing? Demand is high right now. “We can’t mine enough of it to keep up with demand,” says Schadan. He says the company is ramping Willow Creek up again after that mine was idled last year, due to low prices during the pandemic.
“In terms of global steel demand, we’re seeing the world economy in full recovery. Steel demand has grown. And we expect to see that continue for the rest of 2021 knows as the world opens up and we see some stimulus money coming from governments.”
He says part of the reason for this is the Chinese trade war with Australia. “China banned the import of Australian coal into their market. But at the same time, demand for steel is taking off. And they recognize that they need more. So we are seeing an uptick.”
He says the company is now selling into China as well as providing coal to their traditional spot market customers. “We are balancing our sales into China with maintaining relationships with our term customers, so we have some flexibility. When we when we talk about what’s important to Conuma, you’re gonna hear about regulatory certainty and permitting, that’s the value to us if we can get timely permits, it will allow us to capitalize on this. But we can’t mine enough of it right now.”
Trent is the publisher of Tumbler RidgeLines.
