Name
Tent Mountain mine.

Location
In the Crowsnest Pass, in Canada, straddling both sides of the south-west Alberta and south-east British Columbia border.

Mine Owner/s
Montem Resources Alberta Operations, a subsidiary of Montem Resources Corp.

Brief Description
Tent Mountain is a metallurgical mining asset in south-western Alberta. The mine has current mine permits in Alberta and British Columbia, covering valuable steelmaking coal reserves. Montem is working with regulators to obtain mining licences which will allow for the restart of opencut mining.

Brief History
Coal was first discovered at Tent Mountain by prospectors in the early 1900s, with small-scale underground mining occurring sporadically until the 1940s.

The first opencut mine was opened at Tent Mountain in 1948 and various phases of opencut mining occurred until 1983 when operations at the Coleman Collieries were suspended.

Montem acquired the Tent Mountain mine in 2016 and has since conducted several drilling campaigns and two years of environmental monitoring. In early 2020, Montem completed a definitive feasibility study, which showed strong economic results, including a mine life of more than 14 years.

Primary Metals/Minerals
The Tent Mountain mine is expected to produce a single-product steelmaking coal, similar to other Canadian high mid-vol coking coals. This product can be defined as a semihard to hard coking coal, or a second-tier hard coking coal.

Secondary Metals/Minerals
None stated.

Geology/Mineralisation
The Mist Mountain formation of the late Jurassic, early Cretaceous Kootenay Group is the main coal-bearing formation in the region. Coals of the Mist Mountain formation outcrop at Tent Mountain in a general north-to-south direction for a strike length of about 5 km.

There are five major economic coal horizons in the Mist Mountain formation at Tent Mountain, with a cumulative true coal thickness of about 30 m. The 7, 6, 5, 4 and 2 seams are the principal coal seams.

Reserves
Total run-of-mine mineral reserves are estimated at 22-million tonnes.

Resources
Total in-place coal resources at Tent Mountain are estimated at 3.66-million tonnes in the measured category, 48.09-million tonnes in the indicated category and 8.38-million tonnes in the inferred category.

Mining Method
The Tent Mountain mine was previously developed as a surface mine. A combination of truck-and-shovel mining will be used to extract the raw coal. Newer and more efficient trucks and equipment will reduce potential environmental impacts.

Major Infrastructure and Equipment:
Montem is proposing a proven technology of crushing, screening and gravity separation of waste rock from coal at Tent Mountain.

The current design calls for the use of dense-medium cyclones for the clarification of coarse coal, reflux classifiers for the recovery of fine coal and flotation for the recovery of ultrafine coal.

These technologies will increase the recovery of available coal and decrease the processing costs.

Fines management will also experience improvements over the existing operations. Montem is proposing that tailings be filtered at the Tent Mountain coal handling preparation plant (CHPP) and combined with coarse rejects for co-emplacement. This design may eliminate the need for tailings impoundment and will use less water.

The CHPP will be modular in design and is intended to be reused at future operations. No complexities are anticipated with the resumption of coal processing that would require the development of new or unproven technologies.

Prospects
Montem is working on amending environmental permits and obtaining mine operating licences for Tent Mountain. The company has developed an operating plan for the restart of the mine and is actively working with regulators, indigenous peoples and the local community to bring the mine back into production.

Once approved, the next stage will be to build new infrastructure.

Contact Details
Montem Resources
Tel +61 3 9692 7222
Email info@montem-resources.com
Website https://montem-resources.com

Sources
Montem Resources. Website : https://montem-resources.com/projects/tent-mountain (accessed November 2021).
Montem Resources Alberta Operations. Tent Mountain project – project summary table and description (February 2021).