Editorial: Lowell and Rebagliati urge free thinking

The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada kicked off its annual convention in Toronto with a panel discussion on what makes a successful mineral explorer.

Legendary mine-finder David Lowell expressed some strong views about the value of independent thinking on the part of exploration geologists.

Lowell co-developed the highly influential Lowell-Guilbert porphyry copper model, and played a leading part in a string of incredible finds that include: Kalamazoo, Vekol Hills and Casa Grande West in Arizona; JA in Canada; Dizon and Far Southwest in the Philippines; La Escondida, Zaldivar-Escondida Norte, San Cristobal and Leonore in Chile; and Pierina in Peru. More recently he was the geological brains behind the sevenfold growth of Corriente Resources’ Mirador-Panantza copper resource in Ecuador, and is today, through CIC Resources, developing a lateritic titanium and iron ore project that is set to become Paraguay’s first significant modern mine.

Speaking on the panel, Lowell described exploration geology as a “strange occupation” that requires a mix of talents and experiences, and a willingness to take risks and fail.

“Being good at being wrong may be one of my most outstanding qualities,” Lowell laughed. “Someone focused on never being wrong will probably never find a mine.”

He said another reason for his success when working as a consultant from 1961 to 1990 was his ability to give straightforward “yes” or “no” answers. That was convenient for companies who’d hired him, in that if he was wrong about something, it was easy for the company to pin the blame on him. As a consultant, he said only half his proposals were accepted, and that a third of those wound up discovering an orebody, for about six major successes.

“I believe the more drilling you do with a shotgun approach, the more success you’ll have . . . luck has to be counted as a factor.”

In recounting his discovery of the virgin, world-class Pierina gold deposit in the early 1990s, Lowell recalled his critical “spur-of-the-moment decision to stake all the alteration zones in the Yungay graben” — only one of which contained Pierina.

“Keep an open mind, and even a simple mind at times, when the situation demands it.”

As an example, he talked about his current venture in Paraguay, where the pre-existing, incorrect dogma was that there were no titanium deposits to be found in laterite.

Describing some of his inspirations, Lowell called the work on gold-copper systems by Greg Corbett and Terry Leach in the late 1990s (see: www.corbettgeology.com) “one of the most important publications in the last 10 to 15 years,” for the way it examines 50 to 60 gold deposits, and how “it is a model on how to find an ore deposit.”

He closed with a half-joking request for the audience: “please do not fall for dogma excessively . . . except for the Lowell-Guilbert porphyry model.”

Famed West Coast mine-finder Mark Rebagliati of the Hunter Dickinson Group gave a rundown of some of the group’s superb mineral discoveries and resource expansions over the years, including Campo Morado in Mexico, Hollister in Nevada, Xietongmen and Newtongmen in Tibet and Pebble in Alaska.

In his list of “what works” when it comes to exploration, he emphasized a strong culture of science and innovation, as well as continuity of crews, commenting that he’d “take a strong team over a single, dynamic iconoclastic geologist.” He urged managers to make sure younger geologists attend field trips and technical conferences, and are part of an ongoing mentorship program.

But most of all, he said to “take some risks and make some decisions” and “give the exploration team the latitude to develop their models on their own, based on the evidence they’re seeing out in the field.”

Rebagliati recalled the explicit instructions he’d received to only drill close to the anticipated pit outline at the Pebble West copper-gold-moly deposit. However, he was itching to sink a hole into a particularly enticing induced-polarization anomaly to the east, and said to himself, “What the heck. My mortgage is paid off, and they can only fire you once.”

He did sink that hole to the east and encountered significant mineralization, and then sunk another, noting that “I needed to drill a second hole before they found out what I was doing.” That bold move led to the discovery of Pebble East, now regarded as one of the world’s largest, undeveloped copper-gold orebodies.