Orvana Minerals, a multi-mine copper and gold producer with assets in Michigan, Eastern Bolivia and Northern Spain has announced that the company has received the draft mining permit from the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality for the Michigan-based Copperwood copper project.
The Vice President - Operations of Orvana and the General Manager of the Copperwood project, Jim Jacques stated that the approval of the 632 Permit specifies that the State of Michigan regards the project to have fulfilled the required criteria to ensure that the mine can be operated in the most responsible manner.
The Copperwood copper project is Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula in the Wakefield and Ironwood Townships. The project was acquired by Orvana by entering into a mineral lease for 20 years. It covers 712 ha in the peninsula’s Western Syncline. Orvana has completed a 13000 m delineation drilling program over 82 holes to gather sufficient data in order to estimate indicated and measured confidence categories that fulfill the NI 32-101 standards. An NI 43-101 compliant PEA report was released in September 2010 based on underground operation spanning 10 years. Tucson’s KD Engineering was retained, based on the PEA results, to supervise the project towards prefeasibility.
Orvana’s primary gold-copper asset, the El Valle / Boinás- Carlés project located in northern Spain is now in production. Orvana’s Don Mario Mine, located in Bolivia is in the commissioning stage for the processing and mining of the upper mineralized zone deposit of copper-gold-silver.