Having secured ownership of the Lockerby mine near Sudbury, Ont.,
Under the direction of Paul Davis, the junior’s new vice-president of exploration, First Nickel is launching a 7,500-metre program at Lockerby that will involve mostly underground definition drilling on established zones, but also surface drilling to investigate disseminated mineralization and footwall stratigraphy on the newly acquired Landore property adjoining Lockerby’s East zone.
The company will spend another $4.5 million before the end of the year to explore three new properties on the North Range of the Sudbury basin: Foy Mouth, Bowell and Morgan-Lumsden.
“We acquired the North Range properties to secure a larger land package within the Sudbury basin,” says Davis, who comes to First Nickel with more than 15 years experience exploring for nickel in the Timmins area of northern Ontario. “Foy Mouth is located at the confluence of the Foy offset dyke and the main Sudbury igneous complex — a good area to be looking for larger offset-type dyke deposits as well as Sudbury contact deposits.”
This month, First Nickel will reopen Lockerby, which produced more than 8 million tonnes of ore averaging 1.79% nickel and 1.07% copper until it was put on care and maintenance by
The mine, discovered by Falconbridge in 1962, lies in the southwestern region of the Sudbury igneous complex, an elliptical, layered-intrusive body that is 60 km long and 28 km wide. Mineralization occurs in norite at the base of the complex, mainly as breccia and stringer sulphides in the main fault zone, as blebs in the matrix of a related breccia pipe, or as disseminations in the hanging-wall norite.
Exploration to date at Lockerby has focused on finding similar geological settings at depth and laterally along the complex. So far, three main zones have been outlined: Main, Depth and East.
The Depth and East zones, which were the main sources of ore for Falconbridge towards the end of the mine’s 27-year life, still contain measured and indicated resources of 174,000 tonnes grading 2.6% nickel and 1.3% copper, and inferred resources of 892,000 tonnes averaging 2.2% nickel and 1.4% copper. This year’s underground drilling campaign is designed to delineate these resources and incorporate them into First Nickel’s mine plan.
Another exploration priority is the nearby Landore property (formerly West Graham), where First Nickel has the option to acquire a 70% interest from
Landore extends for 1.3 km into the footwall of the Lockerby East ore system. Because the rocks are copper-depleted and there is evidence of Sudbury breccias — the main host of footwall deposits in the Sudbury camp — Davis believes there is significant potential to find high-grade copper and platinum-group-metals deposits there.
Footwall mineralization has been recognized as an important source of ore for the Sudbury basin only in the past 20 years and several companies, including First Nickel’s role model
The footwall deposits occur in the form of stringers, veins, massive sheets and/or disseminated sulphides that appear to have migrated outwards from the Sudbury igneous complex and penetrated the footwall rocks. Davis says one way to pinpoint them is to make a contour map of nickel-copper grades that can provide an idea of where the footwall mineralization may have moved.
The Landore property also contains the more conventional contact-type mineralization within the Conwest deposit. This shallow deposit was estimated to have a (non-National Instrument 43-101 compliant) mineral inventory of 4.3 million tonnes of lower-grade copper in the 1960s, but First Nickel will focus on areas of higher-grade mineralization intersected within the main zone (for instance, 2.35% nickel and 0.35% copper over 4.65 metres).
An aggressive exploration program at Landore includes deep-penetration, induced-polarization surveys from surface, detailed mapping of the target breccia, and a review of previous drilling to identify high-grade areas within Conwest that would be accessible by a ramp from surface.
North Range
On the North Range, First Nickel expects to divide exploration spending between the trio of properties including $3 million on Foy Mouth, $1 million on Morgan-Lumsden and $500,000 on Bowell, which already contains a deposit that may have near-term, open-pit potential.
The junior can earn a 50% interest in Foy Mouth and Morgan-Lumsden and a 100% interest in Bowell. Falconbridge will be the operator on the former two properties, while First Nickel will operate Bowell. The Bowell agreement includes a $2-million cash payment to Falconbridge, $1.5 million in spending on exploration and metallurgical, engineering and environmental studies, and a feasibility study within 12 months.
At Dundonald, First Nickel’s other nickel target, the company is pulling some of the highest grades yet from an ongoing exploration program. The property’s G-Zone recently yielded intercepts of 7.6% nickel over 5.7 metres (including 25.6% nickel over 0.8 metre) and 5.9% nickel over 3.6 metres (including 20.9% nickel over 0.8 metre). The high-grade nickel mineralization is associated with an increase in the precious-metals content, up to 6.7 grams per tonne combined gold, platinum and palladium.
Drilling continues on 12.5-metre centres, for an estimated total of 5,000 metres, to better define the extent of the high-grade G-zone. Underground exploration may begin as early as next year if the drilling is successful in outlining a worthy resource.
Dundonald is 45 km northeast of Timmins, in the Abitibi greenstone belt. The property covers roughly 6 km of a highly prospective komatiitic volcanic package containing multiple nickel-sulphide horizons and a large, layered-mafic intrusion.
First Nickel will be heading into production on Lockerby this month. Crews are currently on-site, refurbishing the mobile equipment and re-establishing surface and underground services. The company has also entered into definitive collective agreements with the Sudbury Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union Local 598 and United Steel Workers of America Local 2020 and has a royalty agreement with neighbour
— The author is a freelance writer based in Toronto.
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