BURST
A Vancouver gold exploration company has filed a lawsuit against the province, alleging it’s allowing another gold company to tunnel through its stake in B.C.’s golden triangle.
But the company it is suing says it is operating within the law.
Tudor Gold Corp. says the province’s gold commissioner did an about-face on a promise to protect its mineral rights near a proposed massive gold mine called the Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell project owned by Toronto-headquartered Seabridge Gold Inc.
Both companies are developing claims in the province’s golden triangle, a mineral-rich area in the northwest corner of the province that stretches 500 km north of Stewart almost to Yukon and Alaska.
At more than 90,000 square kilometres, the area is about the size of Portugal and makes up almost 10 per cent of B.C.’s area. Some 150 mines have operated there since the late 1880s and today it accounts for three-quarters of Canada’s known copper reserves, according to the Northern Miner.
The KSM project is one of the world’s largest undeveloped gold deposits and also has silver, copper and molybdenum, used for strength in metal alloys. The mine is expected top operate for 33 years and is valued at $9 billion.
Tudor and its partner own the adjacent Goldstorm deposit, which has copper, gold and silver. The joint venture has explored and developed the site for more than a decade, according to the lawsuit against the province filed recently in B.C. Supreme Court.
Tudor alleges the province has paved the way for Seabridge and its wholly-owned subsidiary KSM Mining ULC to build tunnels to connect KSM’s proposed open pit and its proposed processing facility using a route that runs through Tudor’s mineral claims.
It says the province’s chief gold commissioner on May 28 issued a decision that would prevent Tudor from interfering with the construction of the tunnel.
The decision came about seven months after Seabridge applied to amend its permit to expand its rights to build the tunnel, according to the lawsuit.
The tunnel would run through Tudor’s Goldstorm deposit, which would “sterilize” its mineral claims and “remove all reasonable uses of the plaintiff’s property,” Tudor said.
Tudor alleges provincial employees repeatedly promised over 12 years from the time a mineral reserve was created by the province in 2012 that the reserve’s conditions wouldn’t apply to any mineral claims file before 2012.
“In 2012, the province said to Tudor … the mineral reserve conditions only apply to new mineral claims,” it said. And it said that promise was repeated by the province and Seabridge, and both said Seabridge would need to negotiate with Tudor to build the tunnel.
But in February 2024, a mines ministry employee for the first time told Tudor the 2012 mineral reserve “prohibits the obstruction, endangerment or interference” with the construction of the tunnel by any miner, including Tudor, according to the lawsuit.
Tudor wasn’t told why its exemption was removed, but a government employee said the KSM project was a “provincially important project” and the tunnel was “fundamental” to its success, it said.
Tudor said if the province limits its property rights, it should provide compensation. Or Seabridge should be required to find an alternative spot for the tunnel or processing plant.
Tudor hopes to negotiate a solution that would allow both companies to develop their interests, president Joe Ovsenek said in an email.
Seabridge didn’t return a request for comment but in a news release posted Friday on its website, CEO Rudi Fronk said, “If Tudor were to be successful in certain of its claims, it could have consequences for the KSM project.”
However, he said he is confident the province has acted within the law and the “authorizations for the (tunnel) are appropriate and reliable.”
Fronk said the claim is the latest in a number of lawsuits Tudor has filed over the years to oppose the tunnel, and “in every instance, the B.C. government has reconfirmed our approvals.”
The release said the Mitchell Treaty tunnel would be two 23-kilometre-long parallel tunnels the company plans to build to connect the east and west sides of its mine site, and about 12.5 kilometres of the route passes through Tudor’s claims area.
The Land, Water and Resource Stewardship Ministry refused to comment.