Eastmain teams with Darnley Bay at Lac Lessard

Last year Eastmain Resources (TSX: ER; US-OTC: EANRF) surveyed its wholly owned Lac Lessard property in the James Bay region of northern Quebec using a combined airborne magnetic and electromagnetic VTEM system that identified 10 highly conductive isolated VTEM anomalies.

Eastmain’s field crew followed up this year with sampling of boulders and outcrop that proved to be highly anomalous nickel, copper, platinum group elements and gold.

Of the 235 rock samples collected from the intrusion, 86 samples contained nickel grades from 0.1% to 2.8%, including 22 samples grading higher than 0.5% nickel. Sixty samples graded between 0.1% and 0.6% copper and 64 samples graded 0.1 to 2.5 grams per tonne combined platinum, palladium and gold.

“Our highest-grade sample was 2.8% — so it’s clearly got a sulphide source to it,” says Don Robinson, Eastmain’s president and CEO. “And of the samples we took that covered several kilometres, a third of the population were anomalous. So it’s pregnant. It clearly warrants a drill campaign.”

Robinson says he is “particularly interested” in Lac Lessard because “the geophysical signature suggests you’ve got a potential concentration of conductive sulphides and not only graphite or iron formation.”

Eastmain plans to start drilling targets on the 3 by 4 km Crete de Coq ultramafic intrusion in the first quarter of 2015, and junior explorer Darnley Bay Resources (TSXV: DBL; US-OTC: DNLYF) will cover the bill.

Darnley Bay signed an agreement with Eastmain to option half of the Lac Lessard property. To earn its half stake, Darnley Bay must spend $2.5 million on exploration over four years, pay $200,000 in cash in stages, and issue 8 million shares to Eastmain. 

“We had a project with some sizzle, but which was non-core for us … so it works well for both companies,” Robinson says of the option agreement. “We are able to have a meaningful drill program next year, which removes a little of the risk for us.”

The Lac Lessard property is 10 km northeast of Eastmain’s wholly owned Eastmain mine property, which is just east of Route 167, a provincial highway the Quebec government has built to open the region to development and create jobs.

Route 167 begins at the shore of Lac Saint-Jean in Saint-Félicien and proceeds 232 km northwest to Chibougamau, and hundreds of kilometres north through Mistissini and Temiscamie, past the Eastmain mine property (and Lac Lessard), and continues another 60 km to Stornoway Diamonds’ (TSX: SWY; US-OTC: SWYDF) Renard project. 

Lac Lessard’s nearness to Route 167 and the facilities at the Eastmain mine property gives it some advantages, including a camp that houses about 100 people and a nearby airstrip. 

Eastmain acquired the Eastmain mine property (which came with $40 million in surface infrastructure, as well as a ramp and underground workings) in 2007.

Placer Dome discovered the high-grade gold-copper-silver deposit at Eastmain using an airborne survey in the 1980s, as the property had highly conductive minerals. The mine only operated for two seasons, however, before it shut down in 1995, after the winter road to Chibougamau failed due to warm weather. (The old winter road is now part of Route 167.)

Robinson credits the Quebec government for opening up the James Bay region to resource extraction by developing a robust hydroelectricity network and key road infrastructure like Route 167, a stark contrast, he says, to Ontario’s Ring of Fire, where the lack of infrastructure has held back development.

“The Ring of Fire is a dead duck,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with Ontario in terms of mineral deposits, but there’s everything wrong with it in terms of infrastructure.”

As for Lac Lessard, both Robinson and Darnley Bay president and CEO Jamie Levy are excited about the start of drilling early next year. Drilling costs, Robinson notes, “are the lowest we’ve seen since the 1990s,” and Levy says that the market is hungry for discoveries.

“We need to have some life come back to the market,” Levy says. “Investors are looking for low-capex, open-pit deposits with good infrastructure.”

He adds that “the Lac Lessard property looks like it pretty much has all of that. It’s got good infrastructure, a good jurisdiction, good geology — so it has everything. It has drill-ready targets and it’s either going to be a mining camp or nothing. With this drill program we’re going to know right away whether there’s another mine.”