Chris Donaldson, Manager, Corporate Development at Western Copper and Gold (T.WRN) draws our attention to a joint Federal/Provincial News Release announcing a 360 million-dollar commitment to road construction in Yukon. The package includes funds for road upgrades and extensions to WRN’s Casino Project.
This is good news for WRN and it is also good news for Goldcorp’s Coffee Project and other projects in the Dawson Range.
Paul West-Sells, in the WRN press release accompanying the announcement, states, “While the people of Yukon are the true beneficiaries from this Funding Approval, shifting the roadwork commitments to the Government will also reduce the capital expenditure for Casino.”
This is exactly right. A lot of Yukon projects require roads and the cost of constructing those roads goes into the capital cost estimates of a project. With the government paying a portion of those costs, less money is needed to bring a project online.
Reducing the capital cost of the Casino copper and gold project is one side of the equation, metals prices are the other and we’ve seen WGN’s shares rising as gold runs over $1300 and copper trades over $3.00.