When: January 25, 2017
Where: Vancouver, B.C.
Nineteen recipients of 11 awards will be honored at The Association for Mineral Exploration’s 2016 Awards Celebration of Excellence Gala, which takes place January 25 at the AME Roundup 2017 conference in Vancouver.
“It is our honor to recognize with these awards those in our industry who, through their leadership, resilience and innovation, have contributed at the highest standards of excellence in exploration and mineral development,” said Diane Nicolson, chair of the AME board of directors, in an announcement. “What they have attained is an inspiration to all and we look forward to celebrating their achievements with you at the Awards Gala at AME Roundup.”
Among the honorees are Chris Rockingham, Carl Edmunds and Wade Barnes, the winners of the 2016 H.H. “Spud” Huestis Award for excellence in prospecting and mineral exploration.
The trio won for their discovery and resource definition of AuRico Metals Inc.’s Kemess East deposit in British Columbia.
The discovery was a real team effort that required patience and perseverance.
The discovery team, which combined Rockingham’s leadership, Edmunds’ geological insight and Barnes’ execution, discovered and delineated a blind porphyry gold-copper deposit.
In the project’s early days, they recognized that the Kemess North deposit was terminated on its northern and eastern edges by faults, which led the team to search for the offset under deep post-mineral cover.
In 2002, they encountered the first indications of a blind mineralized system. By 2003, they were confident that they were vectoring towards better mineralization. In 2007, their confidence increased, when their fourth hole intersected the longest mineralized intercept in the entire Kemess database to that point.
But then the federal government rejected the Kemess North open-pit proposal and all exploration suddenly ground to a halt. By 2010, however, commodity prices rebounded, making a block-caving operation viable, and Kemess North studies started up again.
In 2013, exploration of Kemess East resumed and in January 2015 the first resource estimate was released. The most recent drilling has confirmed and upgraded the initial resources estimation, with such drill intercepts as 628 metres of 0.53 grams/tonne gold with 0.41 percent copper. The deposit remains open in some areas.
The Spud Huestis award was given for the first time 40 years ago, says Jonathan Buchanan, AME’s director of information and public affairs.
“Spud, who became a successful prospector and entrepreneur, came to British Columbia from New Brunswick at the age of 19,” Buchanan said.”He explored for and developed what became Bethlehem Copper Corporation, which is now part of Teck Resources’ Highland Valley Copper Mine.”
The other 2016 AME award winners are:
- Don Parsons and Steve Robertson, who won the E.A. Scholz Award for excellence in mine development in British Columbia and Yukon;
- Terry Salman, the 2016 Murray Pezim Award for perseverance and success in financing mining exploration;
- William Lamb and Lukas Lundin, the Hugo Dummett Diamond Award for excellence in diamond exploration and development;
- Dr. David Broughton and Sello Kekana, the Colin Spence Award for excellence in global mineral exploration;
- Jim Cooney, the Robert R. Hedley Award for excellence in social and environmental responsibility;
- The late Graham Ennis, the David Barr Award for excellence in leadership and innovation in mineral exploration health and safety;
- JoAnne Nelson, a Special Tribute in recognition of her distinguished career in geoscience;
- Susan Craig, the Gold Pan Award;
- Barb Caelles, Alex Christopher and Diane Gregory, the Frank Woodside Past Presidents and Past Chairs Award; and
- Britannia Mine Museum and MineralsEd, the AME’s Outreach Education Fund.
The award presentations take place at AME Roundup 2017, which runs from January 23 until January 26 at the Vancouver Convention Centre East.
AME is the lead association for the mineral exploration and development industry based in British Columbia.
Established in 1912, AME represents, advocates, protects and promotes the interests of thousands of members who are engaged in mineral exploration and development in BC and throughout the world.
Chris Rockingham - Vice President, Development at AuRico Metals Inc.
“It takes more than just geological expertise to bring a project into development,” Rockingham said. “It often takes a lot of patience and persistence. We got our first solid indication of the potential of Kemess East years ago, but, because of low commodity prices, the project lay dormant for many years.”
Carl Edmunds - Chief Geologist at Silver Standard Resources Inc.
“It took a lot of geological detective work to explore Kemess East, because the deposit is structurally complex and deep,” he said. “We knew we were onto something big, but there was a lot about the deposit that we didn’t know and needed to find out. Kemess East was a real team project, and I want to recognize the great contribution of Brian Kay, Ron Konst and Katie Lucas, who did a lot of the early spadework.”
Wade Barnes - Project Geologist at AuRico Metals Inc.
“There are some important lessons from Kemess East that can be applied to other projects,” said Barnes. “For example, trust your instincts, use your imagination, be transparent and check your ego at the door. The other thing is do your due diligence on the project, and make sure your database is clean and functional. I could not have done the geological interpretation without the help of friends and co-workers who loaded the data into our database and cleaned up the historical data.”