Birch Mountain Resources rapped for disclosure again

Following a review by the Canadian Venture Exchange (CDNX), Birch Mountain Resources (BMD-V) has retracted statements that two outside laboratories had confirmed “a new form of gold and platinum group metals” from the company’s Athabasca property in northern Alberta.

The company now says analyses that detected precious metals in extract solution were performed by an in-house lab and were not the direct result of work done in a university lab and a government lab. Furthermore, Birch Mountain disclosed that it had provided all rock and solution samples to the outside labs, which means there is no independent confirmation of the existence of precious metals in the extract solutions.

The existence of “prairie gold” on Birch Mountain’s land package was controversial from the start. The ground was assembled by a local entrepreneur who tested samples in his basement lab or at unregistered labs in the southwestern U.S. Armed with spectacular results, he told reporters that Alberta could become “the next South Africa.” Next, he optioned properties to several companies, none of which was able to confirm economic concentrations of gold, let alone the values obtained by the vendor[s].

Birch Mountain has maintained that conventional assaying is not able to detect its “new form of gold and platinum group metals.” The company is currently developing “a proprietary precious metals extraction technology,” which reportedly has produced solutions containing precious metals.

The CDNX has requested independent verification that this technology does any such thing.