Project Satellite
In March 2017, we publicly launched our Project Satellite initiative, the focus of which is to surface value from five substantial base metals assets - Zafranal, San Nicolás, Galore Creek, Schaft Creek, and Mesaba - all of which are located in stable jurisdictions in the Americas.
The current focus is to complete environmental and social baseline studies, community engagement programs and engineering and design work to prepare environmental impact assessments and development permit applications on the Zafranal and San Nicolás assets.
At the Zafranal copper-gold project in southern Peru, the project team completed infill and geotechnical drilling programs, hydrogeological studies, environmental, social and archaeological studies during 2017. A feasibility study commenced in November 2017 along with expanded community engagement activities and permitting work necessary to prepare a social environmental impact assessment (SEIA). We expect to complete the feasibility study and submit the SEIA by the fourth quarter of 2018. Planned spending in 2018 is $35 million, which is included in capital expenditures for new mine development for our copper business unit.
At the San Nicolás copper-zinc project in Zacatecas, Mexico, environmental and social baseline studies, preliminary hydrogeological studies, and project engineering programs were initiated in the third quarter of 2017 in support of a prefeasibility study and an SEIA. In October 2017, we completed the acquisition of the 21% minority interest in San Nicolás held by Goldcorp Inc. for cash consideration of US$50 million, taking our ownership of the asset to 100%. We expect to complete the prefeasibility study in the second half of 2019. Planned spending in 2018 is $30 million, which is included in capital expenditures for new mine development for our copper business unit.
Field programs including mapping, sampling, drilling, environmental and social baseline studies, and focused engineering work will be carried out on each of the Galore Creek (copper-gold), Schaft Creek (copper-molybdenum-gold) and the Mesaba (copper-nickel) projects in 2018. Planned spending in 2018 for the three projects is $15 million, which will be included in exploration expense.
