Pure Nickel, Crowflight team up for Manibridge (December 03, 2007)

Pure Nickel (NIC-T, PNCKF-O) and Crowflight Minerals (CML-V, CMLGF-O) will be combining interests on the Manibridge nickel property southwest of Wabowden, Man., a Pure Nickel property surrounded by Crowflight’s Thompson Nickel Belt South land package.

Under the terms of the deal, each company contributes $6 million over three years to fund the joint venture, with Pure Nickel contributing four claim blocks immediately around the Manibridge mine and Crowflight contributing seven blocks to make an 18-sq.-km joint-venture area. In addition, Pure Nickel gets an option to earn a 50% interest in 34 claims (about 65 sq. km) surrounding the area by spending $1.5 million on exploration over three years.

Manibridge produced from 1971 to 1977, from a reserve of 1.4 million tonnes that graded 2.55% nickel and 0.27% copper.

Crowflight, which is developing the Bucko nickel deposit just south of Wabowden for production early in 2008, will be operator of the joint venture.

To put together the complete land package for the joint venture and option area, Crowflight concluded a separate deal with HudBay Minerals (HBM-T, HBMFF-O) to earn a 100% interest in two claims, one in the immediate mine area and one in the joint-venture area. Crowflight’s deal with HudBay obliges it to pay $250,000 and to fund exploration spending to a total of $750,000 by 2011. HudBay also gets a 2% net smelter return, a right to offer an offtake deal for processing any mineralization, and a back-in right on the project.

Xstrata (XSRAF-O, XTA-L) retains a 2% net smelter return on the four Manibridge claims, which is an old Falconbridge project. It has an offtake option on production from Manibridge, and a back-in right on any one of the nine former Falconbridge nickel properties it dealt to Pure Nickel in August 2007.

One other claim, part of the joint-venture ground near the mine, is subject to a 2% net smelter return held by Manitoba-based geologist William Ferreira.

Another property in Pure Nickel’s Xstrata package, the William Lake property, is the object of a current drill program, along with airborne electromagnetic surveys and ground and borehole geophysics. The drill program is meant to confirm previous documented work on the property, south of Manibridge.

Falconbridge drilled 260 holes on a number of prospects along a 15-km strike length of favourable mafic and ultramafic rocks on the William Lake property, and consulting firm Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle has recommended infill and stepout drilling on five of them, W56, W56N, W22, W21 and Tower. Follow-up drilling will aim at putting together a resource on at least one of the prospects.

Pure Nickel locked up an interest in the ground between Manibridge and William Lake in September, in an option deal with private company Exploration Syndicate Inc. The private company gets warrants for 500,000 shares of Pure Nickel, exercisable at $2 apiece. Pure Nickel commits to $3 million in exploration spending, earning a 50% interest in the property and activating Exploration Syndicate’s warrants; after that, it can earn a further 15% by spending $2 million and issuing the vendor another 500,000 shares.

Pure Nickel can bring its interest to 75% by funding and delivering a feasibility study on the project, and can take out the remaining 25% interest by paying Exploration Syndicate a fair market value plus 10%.

On one other Manitoba nickel property, Fox River — which hosts ultramafic intrusions buried under Paleozoic-age cover rocks, about 100 km southeast of Gillam — Pure Nickel is discontinuing work. It also dropped its claims to the Florence Lake property in central Labrador.

In Quebec, Pure Nickel has optioned two former Falconbridge properties, Forgues and Haut Plateau Est, to Manicouagan Minerals (MAM-V, MCOUF-O). Manicouagan is obliged to spend $750,000 on exploration to earn a 50% interest in the properties, along with making cash payments of $80,000 over the 2-year life of the option and issuing warrants for 250,000 Manicouagan shares, exercisable at 40 per share for two years.

Manicouagan can bump its interest to 70% by spending a further $1.5 million over the year following the option period.