Glass Earth peers into NZ’s North Island

Perth, Western Australia — A company with a mix of Canadians and New Zealanders recently embarked on a sophisticated program designed to outline new gold and geothermal energy sources in the heart of New Zealand’s North Island — a region noted for recent volcanic activity and for high-grade, epithermal gold-silver deposits.

Glass Earth (GEL-V), which listed on Canada’s TSX Venture Exchange after a reverse takeover of a shell for B.C. Newsletter, is undertaking what chief operating officer Simon Henderson describes as the largest and most-detailed aeromagnetic and airborne gravity surveys ever undertaken in New Zealand.

This has taken place over the company’s large prospecting permit covering the volcanic plateau between Taupo and the Coromandel Peninsula, at the base of which sits Newmont Mining (NEM-N) subsidiary Newmont Waihi Gold’s Martha mine and evolving Favona Lode mine.

The survey of 40,000 line-km is at 150-metre spacings and an elevation of 60 metres — an interesting exercise given that New Zealand is not only noted for its sheep but also its mountainous terrane.

So, while West Australian outfit UTS Geophysics was undertaking some of the work, it was using a turbo-powered version of a cropduster, handy for flexible, low-level flying.

Henderson said the ambitious project will see the building of a three-dimensional (3D) graphics model of the epithermal province’s underlying geology. Glass Earth is using another Canadian-listed company, Geoinformatics Exploration (GXL-V) (which is based in Perth, Western Australia) to process and organize the 3D database and viewing platform. Geoinformatics makes use of its own team and a contract unit of 40 geologists based in Bangalore, India.

Meanwhile, the first-stage work undertaken on the North Island helped identify 29 new gold targets and 22 new geothermal targets.

Glass Earth was originally founded in 2002 as a private New Zealand company with Wellington-based consultant Ian Brown, Auckland accountant Peter Liddle (who has worked with several Australasian mining and oil companies), and Henderson, an experienced geologist who has led field and mine programs in New Zealand (including the Waihi operation) and northern Australia.

When listed in April of this year, Glenn Laing of St Andrew Goldfields (SAS-T) was appointed president and chief executive officer.

Henderson says that using Geoinformatics’ “intervention project philosophy” was seen by Glass Earth as reducing time and cost for discoveries while targeting areas that lift the success rate for discovery.

— The author is a freelance writer based in Perth, Western Australia.