Perry Creek (Wolverine) Mine

Commodities: Metallurgical (coking) coal

Location: 7.5 km northwest of Tumbler Ridge, BC.

Geology and Type of Deposit: Perry Creek is ocated in the Foreland belt of the Canadian Cordillera. Like Brule Mine, the Perry Creek coal deposit occurs in the Cretaceous-aged Gates Formation of the Fort St. John Group, and consists of sedimentary sequence of interbedded sandstone, siltstone and shale, with some conglomerate beds occurring around the area. Average coal seam thickness is nearly 12.5 m.

The Operation: Open pit mining began at Perry Creek Mine in 2006. Mining was stopped due to low coal prices and the mine was placed on Care and Maintenance in 2014. In 2016, Perry Creek was purchased by Conuma Coal Resources Ltd. CCRL resumed production at the Brule and Perry Creek (Wolverine) mines late in 2016, and combined to produce 3.5 million tonnes in 2017. As of 2022, the measured and indicated reserve of the Wolverine mine is 24.36 million tonnes of coking coal.

Mining and Processing: Conventional open pit methods are utilized in mining the deposits in at Perry Creek. When in operation, blasting occurs daily, and the ore is loaded by excavators into haul trucks that move the coal to a processing facility, where it is sorted by size and crushed into small pieces.

Markets: When producing, Perry Creek coal is trucked to Tumbler Ridge Branch Line, loaded onto rail cars, and transported to Ridley Port in Prince Rupert, or to terminals in the Port of Vancouver, where it is then loaded onto bulk carriers for shipment to buyers in Asia, Europe and South America.

Community and Employment: A restart of the operation would employ 180 people, most of which will live in nearby communities such as Tumbler Ridge, BC.

For more information on the Wolverine mine, check out Conuma's website.

BCMEM's Wolverine MINFILE profile.