Western Canadian Canadian Coal Corporation (WCC) entered the pre-application stage of the environmental assessment process for the development of the Wolverine metallurgical coal mine. The proposed mine included the Perry Creek (093P 025) and Mount Spieker or EB deposits. In 2004, the company submitted the formal application, and the environmental assessment certificate was issued in 2005.

The Lower-Upper Cretaceous Gates Formation (Fort St. John Group) is 170 metres thick and contains four major medium volatile bituminous coal seams interbedded with sandstone, siltstone, mudstone and conglomerate. The total average thickness of seams A, B, C and D is 13 metres and they occur towards the base of the formation. Seam B is 2.5 to 6.0 metres thick and is of economic thickness throughout the Mount Spieker property while seam A (0.8 to 1.4 metres thick), seam C (0.5 to 4.2 metres thick) and seam D (0.8 to 3.5 metres thick) are important in isolated areas. Two smaller coal seams A-B and C2, are developed towards the northwest. Seams C and D contain several rock partings (0.1 to 0.3 metre thick in seam D). In the raw coal, average ash percentage varies from 13.79 (seam A) to 31.19 (seam D), volatile matter from 19.54 (seam C) to 23.02 (seam B), fixed carbon from 45.22 (seam D) to 62.62 (seam B), and sulphur from 0.38 (seam D) to 0.95 (seam A).

In the Lower Cretaceous Gething Formation (Bullhead Group), only the uppermost Bird seam is of economic thickness in the Mount Spieker area. The seam is separated into the upper Bird seam with an average true thickness of 3.5 metres and the lower Bird seam with an average true thickness of 1.75 metres, separated by 2.5 metres of strata. In the raw coal, these seams contain 10 per cent ash and 20 per cent volatile matter and are low- volatile bituminous rank. Sulphur content in the upper Bird seam raw coal can be as high as 2.33 per cent cleaning to 1.8 per cent, while contents are 0.8 per cent in the cleaned lower Bird seam.

The structure consists of a large anticlinal box fold adjacent to the east of a broad concentrically folded main syncline. Both trend northwest and are cut by several northwest trending, southwest dipping thrust faults.

An in situ speculative resource is 5.5 million tonnes coal, if the second area (not drilled) is not structurally complex (Coal Assessment Report 559, page 8).

The coal licenses for the EB Area were originally acquired in 1970 and 1971 by Brameda Resources Ltd. (Brameda), a subsidiary of Teck Corporation (Teck). The licenses were part of a block assembled that would eventually become the Bullmoose mine. In 1975, the licenses were optioned to Nichimen Resources Company. At that time, the property was known as East Bullmoose and consisted of 36 coal licences covering an area of approximately 10,500 hectares. The name of the area was changed to Mt. Spieker in 1977 to avoid confusion with Teck’s Bullmoose mine. Ranger Oil Limited (Canada) took over as operator in 1978 and conducted exploration until 1982. Ranger Oil was unsuccessful in attracting an experienced mining company as a partner for development of the property, and the coal licences were turned back to Teck/Brameda in the mid-1980s. The licenses lapsed during 1995 through 1998. WCC acquired the licenses in 2000.

From 1971 to 2001, 10,633 metres of drilling was conducted in the EB Area. A total of 28 trenches were excavated by hand, bulldozer and backhoe. Seven adits were constructed in the four major coal seams identified in the EB Area for a total length of 365 metres. From three of these adits, bulk samples totalling 60 tonnes of coal were removed for process testing.

In 2001, WCC completed a total of 2244 metres of drilling and sampling in the EB area. The primary objective of this program was to improve confidence in the EB Area geology and coal resource and to better evaluate the prospective strip ratio of a proposed open pit.

EB Area reserves equal an estimated 7.4 million tonnes of Probable reserves with an estimated ash content of 26 per cent on an air dried basis (Technical Report on the Wolverine Project for Western Canadian Coal Corp, December 29, 2005, http://www.sedar.com).

The estimated clean coal reserves for EB amount to 4.9 million tonnes including 59,000 tonnes of oxidized coal (Technical Report on the Wolverine Project for Western Canadian Coal Corp, December 29, 2005, http://www.sedar.com).

See the Perry Creek occurrence for more details.

Reserves and resources detailed in a 2007 technical report prepared for Western Coal Corp. are as follows:

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Reserves (tonnes)            Resources (tonnes)
Measured                     Indicated
8,000,000                    11,800,000
(GeoFile 2010-11)
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Western Canadian Coal Partnership, followed by Walter Canadian Coal Partnership, conducted drilling programs on the main EB proposed pit area from 2007 to 2014. Thirty-seven holes were drilled in 2007, followed by thirteen in 2008, six in 2011, nineteen in 2013, and eleven in 2014. Two holes were drilled in 2013 at the EB Trend zone south of the main EB pit zone.