Quaterra finds more platinum in Alaska

Vancouver — With drill four holes completed on the Union Bay project, Quaterra Resources (QTA-V) has discovered copper-nickel-platinum-palladium mineralization on its nearby Duke island claims, some 50-km south of Ketchikan, Alaska.

This marks the first known discovery of platinum mineralization over Quaterra’s wholly-owned Duke Island “Ural-Alaska-type” ultramafic complex. The company collected 40 outcrop and boulder samples from a 400-by-155-metre weathered zone containing 5-to-30% fine grained sulphides. The results returned up to 1.6% copper, 0.25% nickel and 0.65 gram combine platinum-palladium per tonne. The mineralization is hosted in wehrlite and olivine pyroxenites that have been intruded by dunite. Some of the samples show net-textured sulphides and the oxidized nature suggests that higher-grades could be encountered at depth.

Some 10-km away from the discovery, Quaterra has found a second zone of mineralization but no results were given. Based on this finding the company is staking additional claims in the area.

Moving 55-km north northwest of Ketchican, partners Quaterra and International Freegold Mineral Development (ITF-T) have completed two holes into each of the North and Mt. Burnett zones on the Union Bay property. Based on rock-chip and channel samples, the North zone has been traced over a 400-metre strike length covering a vertical distance of 180 metres. The width of the zone remains in question but is estimated at 75-to-125 metres. A total of 162 rock-chip samples have been collected from the zone with a high value of 17.0 grams platinum-palladium coming some 100 metres south of the original discovery outcrop (17.3 grams platinum-palladium). Twenty-three of the samples returned values greater than 0.1 gram platinum-palladium with eight yielding better than 1 gram. The Mt. Burnett zone lies 5-km to the west and has been traced for 760 metres along strike.

The 5-by-10 km Union Bay complex shows the characteristic zonal features of a Ural-Alaska complex, with a 1-km wide dunite core on the southeastern side moving through wehrlite and magnetite-bearing olivine clinopyroxenites to hornblendite and gabbro on the margins. The complex appears as a lopolith folded along a later staged west-northwest trending axis.

Quaterra is earning a 50% interest in Union Bay by spending US$1 million on exploration and making cash payments of US$100,000 over four years. Quaterra also agreed to issue 200,000 shares of its common stock to Freegold — 100,000 shares upon approval of the transaction by the Canadian Venture Exchange and 100,000 shares on May 1, 2002.