A land-use conflict in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle intensified this month as Tudor Gold put forward a formal proposal to reroute Seabridge Gold’s planned Mitchell-Treaty Tunnels (MTT) – and Seabridge, which published commentary a few days earlier, reiterated that the licence permitting the tunnels remains in force and defended the provincial approvals.

Tudor’s October 17 proposal seeks to shift 1 km northward the alignment of the 22-km tunnels that are intended to connect east and west sides of Seabridge’s KSM copper/gold project. Tudor says about 12 km of the current tunnels would traverse its Treaty Creek claims, cutting through the Goldstorm deposit and piercing the under-explored Perfectstorm zone.

Tudor warns the tunnels plus an expected buffer zone would sterilise material ounces and constrain mine design and access, and it framed the modest increase in tunnelling –  about 2.5 km, or roughly a 3.1% rise in KSM’s pre-production excavations – as a small price to preserve the development optionality of a second major project in the region.

Tudor’s statement set out the scale of the stake at issue. The company cites indicated mineral resources at Goldstorm of 21.66-million ounces of gold at 0.92 g/t, 128.73-million ounces of silver at 5.48 g/t and 2.872-billion pounds of copper at 0.18%, plus an inferred resource of 4.88-million ounces of gold at 1.01 g/t, 28.97-million ounces of silver at 6.02 g/t and 503.2-million pounds of copper at 0.15%.

Tudor also highlighted the Perfectstorm target and other largely under-drilled zones it says could meaningfully add to the project’s scale.

Tudor called on the provincial government and Seabridge to adopt the alternative route it first proposed in May, arguing the northern alignment would likely encounter similar or better ground conditions and might reduce the risk of encountering acid-generating rock by staying north of the Sulphurets Fault.

“Our management team joined Tudor in May to develop the strategy to advance Treaty Creek from exploration success to producer,” Tudor president and CEO Joe Ovsenek said on Friday.

“Drilling to date has consistently encountered higher-grading gold mineralisation of two to three grams per tonne, which creates the possible opportunity for the development of an underground mine with a smaller footprint to kickstart gold production. We are looking forward to getting underground next year to prove up that option. And in addition to the defined mineral resource at Goldstorm, there is the compelling bluesky – Perfectstorm and the other grassroots-stage targets nearby which are showing significant promise. We are counting on the BC government to support the potential of Treaty Creek and not sacrifice it for the sake of KSM.”

Seabridge’s public remarks, issued on October 7 –  days before Tudor’s formal reroute submission – characterise Tudor’s legal challenges as an effort to void the provincial licence of occupation that authorises construction and operation of the MTT across provincial land that overlaps Tudor’s mineral claims.

In its release, Seabridge said the 2024 licence of occupation replaced an earlier licence issued in 2014 and gave the company the right to occupy a narrow corridor in which it proposed to construct two parallel 23-km tunnels. Seabridge noted that part of the route passed through the Treaty project claims.

Seabridge defended the Ministry’s exercise of discretion in granting the licence, saying the provincial decision was intended to support the KSM project, which already held environmental assessment approvals, a prefeasibility study and significant early construction permits.

Seabridge chairperson and CEO Rudi Fronk said the company believed the Ministry of Land, Water and Resource Stewardship (WLRS) had acted in the interest of British Columbia. “Considering that the Treaty Creek project not only does not have environmental assessment approvals or a preliminary economic assessment, but has not even articulated a comprehensive project development plan, I am confident that WLRS has acted appropriately in authorising Seabridge to use provincial land for the MTT,” Fronk said.

“We have attempted to find terms to avoid a conflict like this with Tudor, but their demands have been unreasonable. Tudor now has three concurrent, separate legal actions all directed at voiding authorisations for the MTT. In our view, if Tudor thinks it must bring three separate legal actions, it probably lacks confidence in the success of any one of them.”

Seabridge added that the 2024 licence was unaffected by Tudor’s petition and would remain in place if the province and company successfully defended it in court.

Tudor, meanwhile, said negotiation is its preferred path but confirmed that it had launched multiple court proceedings in British Columbia to preserve its mineral rights, including an appeal of a Gold Commissioner decision on a jurisdictional issue tied to a conditional mineral reserve, a proceeding against the province challenging the scope of that reserve, and a petition seeking judicial review of the Ministry’s decision to grant the licence of occupation.

Seabridge believes Tudor’s challenges is a statutory overreach that, if upheld, could impede the province’s ability to site infrastructure on public land where mineral claims exist.