Roundup 2011: Exploration & Commodities Notes, Part 2

By Dan Oancea, InfoMine

AME BC’s annual conference, the world’s premiere technical exploration conference, took place in late January 2011 at the Westin Bayshore in Vancouver, British Columbia. It boasted some 7,000 visitors, a record-breaking attendance level.

Here are my short notes on some of the exploration and commodities topics that were presented by expert geologists, miners and mining investment  analysts at a few of the technical sessions I managed to  attend:

The Gold Rush

Atac Resources’ press releases regarding the discovery of a “Carlin type deposit” on their Rau, Yukon property made headlines and managed not only to attract investors’ attention but also to raise some eyebrows in the geological community and made some jealous individuals, saying that the stock is overbought already.

Mineralization on the property was discovered by following up on a governmental database that displayed arsenic anomalies in a zone that was missing gold placers.

On their site I found that the company listed some of the Rau property’s characteristics and compared them with the classical Carlin-type deposits of Nevada. In their presentation the company said that when looking at their drill cores carbonaceous shales are grey and low grades but those affected by decarbonatization are black and display high grade gold content. No microscopic gold was identified (no microscopy done yet) and jasperoids are minor to date. I could say that their drill cores (displayed in the Roundup’s Core Shack section) were indeed affected by decarbonitization processes.

Also up in the Yukon, Kaminak follows a simple and effective exploration strategy  i.e. they drill below soil anomalies. Augers and deep soil sampling are the norm and if they’re lucky they could get 25 ppb to 75 ppb gold in soil anomalies. Gold is structurally controlled and most of the time you cannot tell the host rock because it is silicified, argillized, brecciated and oxidized.

In Nunavut, Sabina Gold & Silver also managed to identify blind gold mineralization at New Llama & Umwelt by developing a working geological model that includes the destruction of magnetite (low magnetic response) in deformed BIFs and the replacement of magnetite by sulphides (conductivity/low resistivity).

Other Types of Deposits

Let’s start with a “weird” type – i.e. First Point Minerals’ stainless steel “porphyry” Decar deposit located in British Columbia.

It is hosted by peridotites and dunites and the greenish rocks are spotted by white grains of a naturally occurring nickel-iron alloy — awaruite (Ni3Fe). The mineral is magnetic so it is easy detectable by geophysics.

These types of deposits are attractive because the processing is very simple and low cost – i.e. magnetic and gravity aeparation followed by direct shipping to the steel mills. No flotation, smelting and refining is necessary. And because it does not contain sulphides its tailings and waste rocks are non-acid generating. Add to that the fact that magnesium from tailings could help in sequestering carbon dioxide from atmosphere by bonding it into a stable magnesium carbonate and you have a nice “green” project.

Another nickel deposit that hosts awaruite (and some other nickel minerals) is the RNC’s Dumont nickel project located in the province of Quebec, Canada.

Denison Mines presented their newly discovered Phoenix uranium deposit in the Athabasca Basin. A Titan 24 geophysical survey was used to pinpoint its location. I liked their comparison: 1 tonne of the best grade gold ore (containing 2 oz Au) is worth $2,800, while the same tonne of rock at their Phoenix deposit (uranium at $70/lbs) would be worth $28,000.

Note: A commodities discussion will be presented in Part 3.