The Ox, East Seel, West Seel and the adjacent Huckleberry Mine are classified as porphyry copper deposits as they share features characteristic of porphyry copper systems, based on their geometry, association with intrusive rocks, nature of disseminated and veinlet controlled mineralization, alteration assemblages, alteration zonation patterns, and metal associations.

The East Seel deposit contains porphyry style Cu-Au mineralization hosted within a coarse feldspar-biotite porphyry. Mineralization is associated with quartz-chalcopyrite-magnetite-pyrite veins and strong potassic alteration. The West Seel deposit contains porphyry Cu-Au-Mo-Ag mineralization and is hosted in a variety of porphyritic intrusive rocks and in fine grained clastic sedimentary rocks along the intrusive margins. The Ox deposit, located 4 km northeast of the East Seel deposit, hosts porphyry Cu-Mo mineralization in altered sedimentary rocks near the western margin of a granodiorite porphyry stock and has characteristics similar to the
Huckleberry Mine.

The deposits at the Ootsa Property will be mined by conventional truck/shovel open pit methods. Mill feed will be transferred from Ootsa to the mill via a conveyor system. Combined mill feed, waste and overburden mining will be conducted over a period of 12 years at a nominal average rate of 40,000 tpd to supply 5.6 Mt of feed annually at a strip ratio of 1.46:1. Three open pits will be mined in sequence starting with East Seel, then Ox, and finally West Seel. The sequence follows the highest value of the mineralized material, which is primarily a function of grade and strip ratio to maximize Net Present Value (“NPV”).

Mill feed excavated in the open pits at Ootsa will be hauled to the crusher station located near the edge of the Seel and Ox open pit(s).

Mill feed arriving at the plant site will be conveyed to the dump pocket at the existing crusher installation.

Feed from the crushed ore stockpile discharges into the SAG mill via the reclaim/SAG mill feed conveyor.

Flotation feed will have a nominal particle size of 100 µm, delivered as a slurry with a density of 30-40% solids. The rougher flotation circuit is composed of 6 x 100 m3 Outotec Super Cells. Tailings from rougher flotation will go to tails while concentrate will be thickened and reground to about 30 µm prior to cleaning.

Cleaner flotation will be performed by 2 x 10’ diameter flotation columns. Cleaner column overflow is directed to bulk thickening while cleaner tails are sent to the Scavenger Flotation circuit. The Scavenger circuit is composed of 6 x 16 m3 Outotec U-cells. Concentrate from the scavenger circuit is recycled and scavenger tailings are directed to the tailings pond.

Underflow from the bulk thickener is directed to the molybdenum rougher/scavenger flotation circuit. Concentrate from the molybdenum roughers is directed to flotation columns in the molybdenum cleaner circuit. Scavenger circuit tailings reports to the copper thickener. The product generated from the molybdenum cleaner circuit reports to the molybdenum thickener while the underflow from the cleaner circuit is recycled.

When copper and molybdenum are being recovered, copper and molybdenum concentrate is thickened in two separate 60’ diameter thickeners. In each, slurry density is increased to about 70% solids prior to filtration. Final dewatering of copper concentrate is performed with an automatic filter press before the product is stored in bulk in the concentrate storage shed prior being trucked to port. Thickened molybdenum concentrate is dewatered using a vacuum filtration system after which it is bagged and stored in advance of shipping.