Bard boasts 200 million lbs. of moly at Lone Pine

Bard Ventures (CBS-V) will continue drilling on its Lone Pine project 15 km northwest of Houston, BC, after a positive initial resource estimate.

The Alaskite zone on the property has a measured and indicated resource of 110.3 million tonnes grading 0.083% molybdenum, totaling 201.7 million lbs.

Inferred resources stand at 25.8 million tonnes grading 0.088% molybdenum, or about 50.1 million lbs.

Bard president and CEO, Eugene Beukman, says he was pleased with the results of more than two years of exploration work.

“We see this as a good first discovery on this property and it’s from just one of these zones; the Alaskite zone,” Beukman explains. “There are about four or five other zones which we will still be doing work on, so we are doing additional interpretation.”

Beukman says the company has about $1.5 million in the bank, which is enough carry on with exploration work for now as all of the targets are open.  At $50,000 per drill hole, Beukman says the company will go ahead and drill 10 or 20 more holes as well as some geophysics.

“It’s so tough to raise money now and I don’t want to raise at this stage,” Beukman says. “Later in the year when the market is a little bit better then I will have to finance again but I’m not going to finance at this price, which is eight cents. It’s disgusting, you know, but the market is just down in general so we have to live through it.”

The company has shown the project to two major companies interested in becoming a part of the project but no deals have been finalized.

Beukman points out that the 52-sq.-km property is close to Highway 16, making it very accessible. A hydro substation is right on the property and a natural gas line runs through the property.

“That makes our project so economically attractive to us,” Beukman says. “We’ve done some planning for open pit scenarios and some planning for deeper mining as well so we are very keen on what we’ve seen in a short while.”

The company received metallurgical test results a week before the resource estimate. The testing showed that rougher flotation tests produced molybdenum recoveries of 90% or greater to the rougher concentrate. Open circuit batch cleaner tests produced concentrate grades as high as 43% molybdenum.

Bard tested 50 kg of quartered NQ2 size core assaying 0.06% molybdenum and 0.034% copper from the Alaskite zone.

The company drilled nearly 19,000 metres on the property over 2008; about 16,000 metres was on the Alaskite zone, 2,500 metres at the Quartz Breccia zone and about 500 metres on the Granby zone