De Beers gets final environmental nod at Victor

Ontario’s Ministry of the Environment has issued the final environmental approval for development of De Beers‘ Victor diamond project in northern Ontario.

The latest approval is the last of three required provincial environmental assessments. The ministry also turned down a request that the entire mine project go through a provincial environmental assessment as the three provincial assessments were coordinated with a comprehensive federal study under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.

“The First Nations communities in the area have been very involved in the EA process and their traditional knowledge has been incorporated in the project design and future monitoring plans,” said project vice-president Jeremy Wyeth in a prepared statement.

“There has been an extensive collective effort over the last three years to ensure that the Victor mine will minimize impacts and maximize benefits for the people of Northern Ontario. Having successfully completed a number of major steps, we will now proceed with final permit applications to build the mine.”

In June, De Beers ratified an impact/benefits agreement with the Attawapiskat First Nation after 85% of the community voted in favour of the deal.

The Victor project is in the James Bay Lowlands, 90 km west of the coastal community of Attawapiskat. The project is expected to employ 600 people during construction and 400 once in production. De Beers is proposing to build a 7,000-tonne-per-day (2.5-million-tonne-per-year) open-pit mine, based on a minable resource of 28.7 million tonnes averaging 22.3 carats per 100 tonnes, or 0.22 carat per tonne. The operation would produce as much as 600,000 carats per year over a 12-year mine life, generating $117 million in revenue annually.

Victor is one 18 kimberlites discovered in the project area. The highly complex kimberlite consists of two pipes, Victor Main and Victor Southwest that coalesce at surface. The Victor diamonds are incredibly high-value, in the range of US$300 per carat, more than off-setting the lower-grade and translating into revenue of $117 per tonne of kimberlite. Operating costs are forecast at $39 per tonne.

De Beers hopes to begin a three-year construction phase in January 2006.

The $982-million mine would be Ontario’s first diamond mine and De Beers’ second mine in Canada.