Conuma resumed mining operations at Quintette after 24 years of care and maintenance. Credit: Conuma Resources.

Conuma Resources has resumed mining operations at its Quintette coal mine in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, after 24 years of care and maintenance.

Quintette is an open-pit mine, with an estimated resource exceeding 285 million tonnes (mt) of coal, including 40mt of permitted steelmaking coal.

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Quintette operated from 1982 until 2000 when it was closed due to a decline in coal prices. Conuma purchased the mine from its previous owner, Teck Resources, for $120m in February 2023.

The company, which is spending around $500m to bring the facility back into production, resumed mining at Quintette on 5 September.

Josie Osborne, British Columbia’s Minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, said: “This restart is exceptional news for the community of Tumbler Ridge and the 400 workers the mine will employ.”

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Osborne added that the government is continuing to take action to streamline the mine-permitting process in the region.

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“Permitting wait times have been a long-standing issue for the sector, and I am pleased that the hard work of ministry staff has resulted in average review timelines for major project permits being reduced by more than one-third in the past five years,” Osborne stated.

The approval process to restart Quintette’s Little Windy Pit was completed in just over four months.

Alongside Quintette, Conuma operates three other coal mines in British Columbia: Brule and Wolverine, both operational since 2016, and Willow Creek, which restarted in December 2020.

The region’s mining sector is poised for significant growth with Osborne noting that “since 2017 total employment has increased by 10%, private-sector investment has doubled and mineral export value has increased to around $17bn in 2023”.