University of Manitoba - Clayton Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth, and Resources - Faculty Talks
Faculty Talks

Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy & Petroleum
Distinguished Lecture Tour:

Thursday, November 30th, 1:00 p.m.
223 Wallace Building

Speaker: Guy Desharnais, Ph.D., P.Geo.

Lecture: “Metallurgical Sample Selection: A Simple Step that has the Potential to Sink your Project

Many metallurgical programs commonly suffer from samples that are not representative of the “rock recipes” that will eventually see the inside of a processing facility. Unfortunately, this often introduces a bias that is transmitted through all the detailed technical studies all the way to the construction of a flawed processing plant. The most common blunders include selection that is limited to the richest ore type, to a single host rock, to rocks excluded from the mine plan, or the lack of consideration for diluting rock types.

Lecture: “Resource Over-Estimation: Post-Mortem and a Path Forward

Several high-profile mineral exploration projects have recently suffered major setbacks following significant reductions in Resource and Reserve estimates. This talk explores the root causes for these, as well as some possible solutions.

Guy Desharnais obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, which focused on belt-scale geochemistry of mafic-ultramafic rocks and related sulphide mineralization. He worked five years as an exploration geologist with Xstrata Nickel (Glencore). He joined SGS in 2010, where he completed a wide range of projects internationally, from resource estimations, economic evaluations, metallurgical sample selection, geometallurgical studies, and audits of resources and reserves. Guy has prepared NI 43-101 technical reports on a wide range of commodities, and is considered a Qualified Person for a number of deposits types. He is currently working as Director of Mineral Resource Evaluation with Osisko Gold Royalties, and is on the Mining Technical Advisory and Monitoring Committee for the Canadian Securities Administrators. Guy has a passion for sharing his technical knowledge and has completed several training sessions for a variety of audiences in French, English and Spanish. He led the team which won the Integra Gold Rush Challenge in 2016 (500k$) which applied a combination of geology, virtual reality, weight of evidence and machine learning techniques to identify the most prospective exploration targets.