St. John’s, NFLD — An increased level of exploration activity in Newfoundland and Labrador has resulted in 30,500 new claims being staked this year (to the end of October), surpassing the previous high of 26,600 claims in 1988, set prior to the Voisey’s Bay nickel discovery.
Voisey’s Bay sparked an unprecedented staking rush in Labrador when almost 250,000 claims were staked in 1995.
There are currently just under 65,000 claims held in good standing in the province. Ken Andrews of the Mines and Energy Ministry’s Mineral Lands Division expects it could possibly reach 70,000 claims by the end of the year. This is considered quite an improvement over 2000 and 2001, when 46,000 and 47,000 claims, respectively, were held. “We’re getting back into some healthy levels of staking activity,” Andrews told delegates attending the recent annual conference of the Newfoundland branch of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum, in St. John’s.
Exploration expenditures in the province for 2002 are forecast at $25 million, and may approach $30 million, which would make it quite comparable to US$28 million spent in 2001.
“This is very good, considering metal prices and the state of the industry,” says Andrews.
On the island of Newfoundland, approximately 25,000 claims have been staked to date. Much of the staking activity has focused on gold and known historical occurrences. Quite a large part of the staking has been in the north-central part of the island, specifically the Botwood Basin area.
A year ago,
The joint venture completed a third round of drilling this summer at Moosehead consisting of 33 holes totalling more than 3,200 metres. The drilling tested several fault-related zones, returning mixed results. Drilling encountered several bonanza-grade gold intercepts, but continuity remains questionable. Sudbury Contact recently committed to a second year of exploration as part of a 3-year option deal to earn an initial 51% interest of the Moosehead project.
Sudbury Contact also signed a deal with
Several junior companies have picked up land positions in the Botwood Basin area over the course of 2002, either through staking or joint ventures. These include
Leading the Newfoundland gold rush is Rubicon Minerals, a company that has been active in base metal exploration in the province since 1996. In recent years, Rubicon has established a land position covering six district-size projects spanning the island’s northern tip to the southern Avalon zone.
“We really view Newfoundland as a gold province with a diversity of opportunities,” says Rubicon Chairman Garfield MacVeigh. “We’re certainly the dominant landholder in the Botwood Basin, but we’re looking beyond the Botwood Basin. We see a much more diverse range of opportunities.”
“We are a North American-focused company and we think this is one of the best early gold opportunities in the country,” adds MacVeigh.”
Rubicon made one of the more significant developments in Newfoundland this year with the grassroots discovery of the Golden Promise prospect. The discovery is outside the Botwood Basin, 15 km southeast of the town of Badger. The company conducted a small, 1,000-metre drill program during the summer to test the source of a train of large gold-bearing boulders discovered in May 2002 by local prospector William Mercer. Grab samples from the boulders had yielded bonanza-grade values of up to 353 grams. The discovery was made in an area with no record of any staking or previous exploration work.
Rubicon drilled 21 holes into a 225-metre strike length of the Jaclyn zone vein target to a vertical depth of only 50 metres. Of the 17 holes that intersected the vein zone, 15 contained visible gold. An additional three holes were lost as a result of technical difficulties, and a fourth hole was not drilled deep enough to reach its target. Selected highlights of the drilling include 69 grams over a true width of 0.21 metre, 11.4 grams over 1.8 metres, 16.6 grams over 1.6 metres, 7.05 grams over 2.2 metres, 17.7 grams over 0.94 metre, and 31.6 grams over 0.34 metre. The zone remains open for follow-up in all directions.
Rubicon has acquired a big land position covering 550 sq. km of this unexplored belt.
“This is a great example of the kind of opportunities that are here, and I think it just sets the stage for the big ones to come,” MacVeigh says.
Candente Resource is a Vancouver-based junior led by Joanne Freeze, with an extensive portfolio of early-stage Peruvian precious metal properties. The company expanded its focus to Newfoundland in early 2002 by optioning the Linear property from the KriASK Syndicate and hooking up with noted local prospectors Kevin and Allan Keats. Candente has since staked about 1,500 claims based on regional and structural controls, lake-bottom sediment surveys and the Keats’ knowledge of gold showings and anomalies. Regional exploration started in May 2002 and resulted in the optioning of several other properties in central Newfoundland, including the drill-ready Island Pond and Paul’s Pond from Cornerstone Capital.
The Island Pond property adjoins the southwestern end of Altius and Sudbury’s Moosehead joint venture. Candente began a small, 1,000-metre drilling program at Island Pond in mid-November to test the gold-bearing potential of a group of northwesterly oriented structural zones. Several of these targets have coinciding soil anomalies. Candente can earn a 51% interest by spending $1.5 million on exploration, issuing 115,000 shares and paying Cornerstone $115,000 over four years.
Chiouk Brook
Harry Barr’s
Altius also optioned off a 49-claim property near Gander to
Jackson’s Arm
Kermode feels the property has potential for Carlin-style mineralization. The granite is unconformably overlain by a lower Paleozoic carbonate sequence consisting of basal quartzites, calcareous argillites and argillaceous limestones. A review of BP Selco’s work has uncovered intercepts in the overlying platform sediments. One hole shows a 35-metre section of altered limestones, with a 23.35-metre section averaging 1.12 grams. This intersection was never followed up. The gold itself is micron-size and has an antimony-mercury-arsenic association in the platform carbonates.
Kermode can earn a 100% interest in the project by spending $2 million over five years and paying South Coast $285,000 and 550,000 shares over four years. The company has picked up additional ground in the area through a second option with Cornerstone.
Labrador
Approximately 5,500 claims have been staked to date in Labrador. Most of the interest and activity is for base metals.
Another large area, consisting of 1,000 claims, was staked for nickel by RAM Exploration in the Snegamook area of central Labrador.
The Canadian exploration division of
Donner/Falconbridge
About $11 million is being spent on base metal exploration this year, with $9 million in Labrador and $2 million on the island of Newfoundland. The Voisey’s Bay South project was the single largest base metal program in the province. The South Voisey’s bay project, centred 75 km west of the Labrador coast and 90 km south of Inco’s Voisey’s Bay nickel deposit, covers 650 sq. km in which
On the island,
Noranda began work on the project in 2001 with a 6-hole program next to the Blue Point showing, a coastal cliff exposure that yielded 0.93% copper and 13 grams silver across 13.5 metres of chip samples. The two best holes returned intercepts of 1% copper and 12.1 grams silver over 14.2 metres, and 0.8% copper and 7.7 grams silver over 9.7 metres.
Further work through 2001 and 2002 involved an extensive lake-sediment sampling survey and follow-up soil sampling, mapping and prospecting. Noranda carried out a second phase of drilling in August, with results pending. To date, Noranda has spent nearly $1.2 million on the project.
In the meantime, Cornerstone is investigating the potential for iron oxide-type copper-gold mineralization at its South Princess project on the Bonavista peninsula in eastern Newfoundland.
This past summer,
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