North American Nickel has intersected high-grade nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization at its Imiak Hill discovery in the northern part its 100%-owned Maniitsoq project in southwest Greenland. Highlights include 25.51 m grading 3.25% nickel, 0.48% copper, and 0.11% cobalt at 149 m down the hole in one hole and 14.90 m grading 2.67% nickel, 0.39% copper and 0.09% cobalt at 136 m down the hole in another.
Assays from some of the 2013 drilling program at Imiak Hill were still pending as of mid-October. Assays for the Imiak North and Spotty Hill mineralized intrusions at the Imiak Hill conduit complex were also pending.
North American CEO Rick Mark said, “The results from our first regional evaluation of these mineralized norites underscore the potential along the 75-km-long Greenland norite belt. It is considered a greenfields exploration project, but it is a district-scale, nickel sulphide project that has mineralization starting at, or near, surface containing high grades of nickel-copper-cobalt, and it is located adjacent to ice-free, deep tidewater suitable for year-round shipping.”
Also in 2013, North American Nickel flew an additional 917.3 line-km of VTEM helicopter-borne time domain electromagnetic and magnetic surveys over portions of the Maniitsoq property. A total of nine flight blocks were surveyed. They covered norite and other mafic-ultramafic intrusions outside the Greenland norite belt as well as areas within the belt that required more detailed surveying.
(www.northamericannickel.com)
Trevali Mining reports that that underground drilling at its Santander zinc-lead-silver mine in Peru has intersected multiple zones of high-grade polymetallic mineralization that remain open for expansion. The 3,968-m drill program in 39 holes was designed to explore and define new footwall mineralized zones encountered in recent underground development and to provide deeper in-fill definition information on the Magistral Norte deposit to facilitate long range mine planning.
Three new zones occur in the footwall of the principal Magistral Norte deposit. The Pariatambo and Manto zones lie parallel to the main Magistral Norte zone, while the Rosa zone is oblique (approximately 80°) to the main mineralized structures and is thought to represent the later phases of replacement mineralization along a paleo fault, which is part of a set of faults conjugate to the main north-south structures.
Due to the orientation, the Rosa Zone has been under-explored. The majority of previous surface exploration drill holes were aimed parallel to the Rosa Zone, leaving it for the most part undetected.
These drill results give Trevali added confidence in mine planning and scheduling going forward, with the added bonus of new mineralized material in the footwall that is easily and immediately accessible for mining from the Magistral North ramp.
(www.trevali.com)
Pilot Gold’s initial infill mapping, soil sampling, rock sampling, and compilation of drill data from the TV Tower property on the Biga peninsula in northwestern Turkey indicate the presence of a potential shallow, bulk-tonnage oxide gold-mineralized system at least 4 km long between the Kayali and Karaayi targets, known as the K2 trend.
The Kayali zone was first drill tested in 2011, returning 0.87 g/mt oxide gold over 114.5 m in the discovery hole. Drilling at the recently secured Karaayi zone by previous operators intersected two clusters of near-surface, oxidized gold mineralization 2 and 3 km to the west of Kayali.
Since securing the full K2 target area, Pilot Gold has accelerated surface sampling and mapping to better define the corridor of oxide gold-mineralized rocks. The company drilled 3,585 m in 17 holes at the Kayali zone in 2013, with assays for all holes pending as of October 22. A further 1,300 m are being drilled at the Karaayi zone.
TV Tower is a joint venture between Pilot Gold (40%) and Teck Madencilik Sanayi Ticaret A.S. (60%), a Turkish subsidiary of Teck Resources. Pilot Gold is the project operator and can increase its interest in the project to 60% through sole funding of exploration over a three-year period.
(www.pilotgold.com)
La Société Nationale Industrielle et Minière (SNIM) of Mauritania reports that an exploration program at Guelb Tizerghaf, 40 km north of Zouerate, Mauritania, has identified 830 million mt of inferred magnetite iron ore resources. Exploration operations covered the entire area of a 6-km-long hill, with 60,000 m of drilling completed since December 2012.
SNIM has initiated a scoping study of the project, which has the potential to be the largest mining complex in the company’s history.
SNIM currently operates iron ore mines in the vicinity of Zouerate in northern Mauritania that have a production capacity of 12 million mt/y. The company is pursuing an expansion program to lift production to 40 million mt/y by 2025 through construction of two complexes having production capacities of 14 million mt/y each. The first complex is planned to go into production as early as 2019.
SNIM intends to invest more than $5 billion over the next 10 years to achieve its growth objectives.
(www.snim.fr/e)
