Name: Vista mine.

Location: Vista is located on the eastern margin of the Rocky Mountains’ thrust belt, which trends north-west to south-east across Canada’s British Columbia and Alberta’s provincial borders.

Controlling Company: Coalspur Mines.

Brief History: Vista is Coalspur’s flagship project and has the potential to be developed into the largest export thermal coal mine in North America. A bankable feasibility study was completed in January 2012. In April 2012, Coalspur completed an optimisation study on the proposed mine, which increased the project’s marketable coal production capacity by 7%, from 11.2-million tons a year, to 12-million tons a year. A further study was completed later in that year, which resulted in a significant decrease in the capital required to bring the project into production. The mine is expected to reach full production in 2019.

Brief Description: Vista is designed to reach a clean coal production rate of 12-million tons a year, has a mine life of 29 years and will be developed over two phases. Phase 1 will be developed in two stages. The first stage will produce three-million tons a year of coal and the second for a further two-million tons of production. Phase 2 will add an additional seven-million tons a year of coal production to take Vista to its maximum design capacity of 12-million tons a year by 2019.

Mining Method: Dragline and large truck-and-shovel mining methods.

Products: Coal.

Major Infrastructure and Equipment: Vista’s mining fleet will comprise draglines and truck/shovel combinations. The major equipment used over the life of the mine will include two 61-m3-capacity draglines, 57 m3 electric cable shovels, 177 t and 363 t haul trucks and 350 mm blast-hole drills.

Run-of-mine (RoM) coal will be trucked to a crusher station from where it will be conveyed to the coal process plant to undergo beneficiation to meet final product specifications.

RoM coal will be delivered from the mine and dumped into the twin dump RoM bin, with an 800 t RoM coal capacity. RoM coal will be fed into a nominal 3 500 t/h apron feeder and a low-speed twin-roll primary sizer capable of handling sizes up to 1.2 × 1.2 × 2.0 m.

The coarse-coal handling area will comprise a low-speed twin-roll secondary sizer to further crush the coal (125 mm nominal). The coal will then be sent to twin tertiary sizers to further reduce the coal (50 mm nominal) before transporting it to the coal processing plant.

The coal processing plant comprises two identical 1 500 t/h modules designed for an average 55% yield on 20.4-million tons a year of RoM production, using 6 800 actual operating hours or at 78% net effective use.

Geology/Mineralisation: The Vista deposit forms part of a thick sequence of continental sediments of the Upper Cretaceous-Tertiary Saunders group that is more than 3 600 m thick and divisible into the Brazeau, Coalspur and Paskapoo formations. All three units include carbonaceous partings and thin coal seams, but the major coal deposits are restricted to the Coalspur and Paskapoo formations.

The coal-bearing upper part of the Coalspur formation consists of about 300 m of interbedded sandstones, siltstones and carbonaceous to bentonitic mudstones and several thick continuous coal zones. A distinct, resistive conglomerate, known as the Entrance conglomerate, marks the base of the Coalspur formation and is about 275 m below the lower-most coal zone. The Coalspur formation has six persistent and correlatable coal zones, which have been identified in the Hinton region. These zones are typically multiple coal seams interbedded with multiple mudstone/bentonite partings and can range in thickness from 1 m up to 35 m. In descending order, the coal zones are Val d’Or, Arbour, McLeod, McPherson, Silkstone and Mynheer zones. The most significant zones present in Vista are Val d’Or, McLeod and McPherson.

The Coalspur formation in Vista is exposed in subcrop along the south-western margin of the Alberta syncline. The structure is a simple monocline, trending 300° north-west/south-east and dipping gently north-east from 6° in the western part of the property up to 15° at the McLeod river on the eastern boundary. No significant faulting has been identified on the property and glacial ice deformation has been observed locally along the subcrop margins of the coal zones.

Reserves: Total proven and probable reserves as at December 31, 2011, were 565.5-million tons.

Resources: Total measured and indicated resources as at May 8, 2012, were 1.056-billion tons. Inferred resources were 460.9-million tons.

Prospects: Approvals for Phase 1 are expected towards the end of the first quarter of 2013.

Contact Person: Investor relations North America and Europe Chris Borowski.

Contact Details:
Coalspur Mines,
tel +1 403 261 9997, fax +1 403 767 6378, email cborowski@coalspur.com, and website http://www.coalspur.com.