Chapleau options Kougarok tantalum property in Alaska

An agreement with Navigator Exploration (nvr-v) allows Chapleau Resources (CHI-V) to earn up to a 60% interest in the Kougarok tantalum property in north-central Seward Peninsula, about 112 km from Nome, Alaska.

Chapleau can earn an initial 50% stake by spending US$1 million on exploration before the end of 2003. This can be increased to 60% by spending an additional US$500,000 by the end of 2004.

The property was previously explored by Anaconda Minerals, which, in the early 1980s, carried out 10,000 metres of drilling, 1,100 metres of bulldozer trenching, geological mapping, grid geochemical sampling and gravity surveys. The major spent US$5.5 million to determine the property’s tin potential. Ananconda encountered tantalum mineralization incidental to the tin mineralization. However, exploration ceased in the mid-1980s, owing to the collapse of tin prices.

Navigator says the property contains a large magmatic-hydrothermal system containing tantalum- and tin-mineralized greisens in a strongly evolved fluorine-lithium granite. This geological setting is similar to economic tantalum deposits elsewhere in the world, which also host rare-metal mineralization.

Based on past work, the mineralized system at Kougarok is believed to have a surface geological and geochemical expression of more than 1,200 metres by 1,000 metres. Only two of several mineralized areas have been studied in detail, and tests indicate that the deposits are not metallurgically complex.

Diamond drilling by Chapleau will attempt to increase and expand the previously indicated area of high-grade tantalum mineralization. Geological mapping will be carried out in other project areas, with drilling of the best targets to follow.