The Wapiti River property consists of 17 licenses covering 14 936 hectares and is located approximately 45 kilometres southeast of Tumbler Ridge. The company envisions an underground longwall with room-and-pillar operation producing 8 000 000 tonnes of washed hard-coking coal annually. The property is approximately 19.5 kilometres long along its northwest striking length, from Kinuseo Creek to Wapiti River and 6 to 8 kilometres across in the east–west direction.
The region is underlain by an assemblage of sedimentary rocks consisting mainly of continental margin and shelf facies rocks. This assemblage was deposited on and to the west of the ancestral North American craton. These sedimentary rocks range in age from Hadrynian to Upper Cretaceous. Structurally the rocks are part of the Foreland thrust and fold belt of the North American Cordillera. The rocks are folded into anticlines and synclines with north-northwest–striking fold axes. They are further deformed by northeast-directed thrust faults. The structural complexity at the Wapiti River project is classified as ‘moderate’ (Coal Assessment Report 935) according to the guidelines on coal resource estimation in Geological Survey Paper 1988-21.
The coal measures of the region occur mainly in Cretaceous sediments deposited unconformably on older strata. Coal is hosted by the Gething and Gates formations at the Wapiti River project. Gates Formation coals are the primary exploration and mining target. Gething coals occur at depths greater than 600 metres, and were considered uneconomic to mine under the current conditions.
The Wapiti River property is underlain by alternating non-marine and marine sequences in the Lower Cretaceous Bullhead and Fort St. John groups. The Bullhead Group includes coarse conglomerate of the Cadomin Formation, overlain by the coal-bearing Gething Formation, which is greater than 100 metres thick at the Wapiti River property and includes calcareous sandstone, minor conglomerate and claystone, and coal. The Fort St. John Group overlies the Gething Formation and includes the Moosebar, Gates, Hulcross, Boulder Creek and Hasler formations. The marine Moosebar Formation is approximately 52 metres of shale with glauconitic sand at the base. The coal-bearing Gates Formation overlies the Moosebar and is greater than 250 metres thick at the Wapiti property. It includes fine to coarse lithic sandstone, conglomerate, coal and claystone. The Hulcross Formation overlies the Gates and is dominated by marine shale. The succeeding Boulder Creek Formation, which consists of 125 to 200 metres of non-marine sandstone, siltstone, claystone and conglomerate, also contains some minor coal seams.
A study commissioned by Dehua (Coal Assessment Report 935) proposed a seam nomenclature scheme based on Dehua's 2012-2013 drilling results. The Gething Formation hosts seven main seams, called the A seams collectively and A0 through A6 specifically, with A0 being the lowest in the section, and A6 the topmost. The 13 B seams (B0 through B12) are hosted by the Gates Formation, with B0 at the base and B12 at the top. All of the Gething Formation coals occur at depths greater than 600 metres. The Gates Formation coals are the primary mining target of the project.
In 2012, Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc (Dehua) acquired the eastern part of the Duke Mountain block of the old Monkman project area of the 1970s and called it the Wapiti River project. The much larger Monkman property was broken up through a series of divestitures and acquisitions in the late 1980s, as outlined in Coal Report 548. In 2012 to 2013, Canadian Dehua International conducted a 39-hole drill program and completed four lines of seismic survey (Coal Assessment Report 935).
The 2014, Monkman project (MINFILE 093I 013) is a much smaller block (11 070 hectares) held by Teck Coal Incorporated, and is located along the western flank of the Wapiti River project tenures.
A report by Snowden Canada in 2014 for Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Incorporated included a raw coal resource estimate of 37 360 000 tonnes measured, 194 200 000 tonnes indicated, and 1 018 900 000 tonnes inferred.
Between 2014 and 2016, Canadian Dehua International Mines Group Inc completed a feasibility study for a proposed underground mine at the Wapiti River site. This also included a technical report by Norwest Corporation summarizing coal exploration for the Mine 1 area of the Wapiti River Coal project and an NI 43-101–compliant technical report with an updated resource estimate.
