THE BIG NICKEL SEARCH

But Richard Worsfold, director of exploration for Inco, says his company’s return to profitability in 1987 has enabled it to reactivate many of the exploration programs that were started both in Sudbury and Thompson during the boom years One problem the company faces is a situation where the geologists who did the seminal work on many of the nickel projects are now working for Inco Gold (created in 1987) Assigning new people to the work would destroy some of the continuity of the work As Worsfold explains, it takes time to gear up again

Nickel is unique among metals Not only did prices sink to great depths in the early 1980s, but they stayed down for a much longer period of time compared with copper, zinc and lead prices So exploration geologists have been away from the nickel hunt longer than they’ve been away from exploring for the other base metals

Spurred by the return to profitability (the company chalked up a record $845 million in 1988), the nickel exploration department at Inco has grown modestly in the past 18 months (Gold exploration picked up the slack in recent years, accounting for $18 million in expenditures in 1987) But the nickel exploration budget for the country’s premier nickel producer has rebounded even more dramatically Budgets have been nearly doubling consecutively over the past three years The figure for 1989 is $12 2 million; about $8 8 million of that is being spent in Sudbury, the balance in Thompson

“The resurgence in nickel prices has enabled us to do the things we’ve wanted to do, but couldn’t afford, for several years now,” Worsfold says

During the lean years, Inco could only maintain modest, short-term drilling programs at existing mines But despite the relatively skimpy annual budgets of the early part of this decade, Inco has managed to maintain a good reserve base in Canada of about 448 million tonnes In Sudbury, the company’s main base of operations, Inco has reserves totalling about 400 million tonnes, or 25 years of production The company treats about 16 million tonnes per year at its Ontario division

Work this year includes looking in areas beyond those of known mineralization But the bulk of Inco’s budget goes toward making ore out of mineralization that has already been blocked out In Thompson, an exploration drift is being driven in the hangingwall of the Thompson orebody on the 4,000-ft level About 500 ft are planned for 1989 Another drift, a future haulage drift in the footwall on the 3,600-ft level, is considered more important It will be advanced about 2,000 ft this year, with drill stations established every 500 ft to test the satellite orebodies north of the main Thompson orebody Surface drilling will test areas of known mineralization Mine development work at both the Birchtree mine and the Thompson open pit are not included in the $5 4-million Manitoba exploration budget

Two years down the road, Inco hopes to have a number of new surface drill targets in the Thompson Nickel Belt, a stretch of rocks 180 km long marking the boundary between the Churchill and Superior geological provinces The expectation is based on an airborne total field gradiometer survey being completed this year by Aerodat Ltd of Mississauga, Ont Last year, the geophysical contractor flew the northern half of the belt and produced a map of Inco’s claims based on that data Those maps are being assessed this year by Inco’s exploration crew in Thompson under the direction of Merv Toderian The data will be compared with ground electromagnetic data already compiled by the company “This data should give us a very good new map accurately reflecting the various rock types in the belt,” Worsfold says “Because the Thompson area is so heavily covered by overburden, this information should help us develop our understanding of the structure of the belt, something which, in the past, was based largely on drill hole interpretation ”

In Sudbury, Inco’s exploration strategy includes looking for the extensions of known mineralization at depth and along strike According to Norman Anderson, who is in charge of Inco’s exploration programs in Sudbury, for the past 100 years or so that has been done by looking at two targets One is at the base of the norite unit, which occupies the lower zone of the Sudbury Igneous Complex; the other along the offset dykes that extend radially and concentrically out from the basin Now, a third environment for exploration has been added to the list “We have had some interesting results in the past several years in finding rather small (but quite significant in terms of grade) copper and platinum-group-metal values in the footwall (breccia) rocks, at both McCreedy West (on the North Range) and Garson (on the South Range),” Anderson says

But the company’s thrust toward these copper/platinum group metals deposits has not detracted from its search for nickel Starting in the mid-1970s and extending into the early 1980s, Inco mounted a major deep drilling program from surface which tested these targets on many of the company’s properties More than 100 holes were drilled, each in excess of 5,000 ft deep That program brought many of the company’s properties to a more mature stage of exploration, enabling Inco to block out large areas of prospective ground

Major drilling programs this year involve driving exploration drifts and cutting stations in areas where deep mineralization was indicated by the deep drilling program of the late 1970s Underground programs are planned at the Copper Cliff South, McCreedy West, Levack, Crean Hill and Creighton mines Minor programs are planned at the Lower Coleman and McCreedy East mines Most holes are bq size, drilled to a depth of about 1,500 ft to 2,500 ft using drills Inco has purchased The Lower Coleman orebody is being prepared for production, which should start in 1990 Inco also has two new nickel mi nes in Ontario this year — the Whistle mine in the northeast corner of the Sudbury Basin and the Shebandowan mine near Thunder Bay Mining from an open pit started at the modest-size, low-grade Whistle deposit in 1988 and should progress at a rate of about 2,700 tonnes per day throughout 1989 The deposit has long been considered marginal and Inco has had access to better ore in previous years But last year the company was able to contract out the mining work at a reasonable cost, making the deposit economic Falconbridge Soaring

Falconbridge is in a different league, both in terms of nickel produced and money spent on exploring for more The company treated about 2 6 million tonnes of ore in 1988 (the most Falco has mined in any one year is 4 2 million tonnes, back in 1970) It now has 46 3 million tonnes of nickel reserves (about 18 years of production) in Sudbury, so the company has to be more aggressive in its exploration strategy That means taking advantage of opportunities as they come up With record-high profits of $341 million in 1988, 1989 should offer a golden opportunity for Falco to rebuild its reserves Under the direction of Michael Knuckey, vice-president, exploration, the company is doing just that

The exploration crew in
Sudbury has been revitalized over the past two years and is now bigger than ever, with 14 permanent geologists (compared to three to four, historically) David Comba, Falco’s regional exploration manager, has moved to Sudbury from the Kidd Creek operation in Timmins and Paul Severn, who formerly worked for Falconbridge Copper at Sturgeon Lake and Winston Lake, is now senior exploration geologist in Sudbury That amount of base metals expertise has renewed interest in treating the Sudbury Basin as a collapsed volcanic caldera, ripe with base metals deposits The last time Inco did any base metals exploration within the basin was in the mid-1970s

“The big difference between us and Inco is that we got out of gold three years ago, while they’re still in it,” Knuckey says “We’ve gone from spending half our budget on gold to spending only 15% this year ”

Falconbridge is spending 73% more on surface and underground drilling in Sudbury than is giant Inco The game of catch-up will cost Falconbridge $15 2 million this year — that’s 4 2% of 1988 profits, compared to Inco, which is spending 1 4% of 1988 profits on exploration for nickel this year Falco is spending $8 5 million on surface drilling and $6 7 million on underground drilling in Sudbury Where the company has an edge is in surface prospects Last year Falco commissioned Aerodat Ltd to fly a sophisticated, satellite-positioned helicopter- borne survey of the entire Sudbury basin This huge elliptical Proterozoic structure, consisting of mafic and felsic intrusions called the Sudbury Igneous Complex, encompasses an area of 1,500 sq km (60×25 km) The survey, which cost $1 million to complete, was flown on 100-m centres and has resulted in a data base that will take Falco years to “mine ” “There are structures here we didn’t even dream existed,” Knuckey says, pulling a snap shot out of his desk drawer A photo of a computer-enhanced shadow map of the basin, it shows a beautiful outline of the basin itself, criss-crossed by a number of liner structures (we are not allowed to reproduce the photo here)

Gradiometry is not the only new approach Falconbridge is bringing to the exploration scene in Sudbury The company is lobbying the Geological Survey of Canada’s Lithoprobe program (which is mapping the deep geological structures of representative areas of Canada) to do a deep seismic profile of the basin “If this goes through, we’ll really begin to understand what’s going on,” Knuckey says Some geologists suspect there is a huge ultra-mafic body about 5 km below the centre of the basin

On top of that, the little bird, as Falco is sometimes called, is spending $12 million this year to sink a 4 9-m-diameter, concrete-lined circular shaft, 900 m deep on the Lindsley property Situated a stone’s throw from the commercial strip, on Lasalle Boulevard, the Lindsley deposit is Falco’s largest exploration program Had the ground been held by Inco, chances are it would have been found years ago, according to Inco’s Anderson, such is the level of maturity of many of Inco’s claims

Diamond drilling from underground stations on the 1,310-m and 1,585-m levels won’t start until 1990 when the shaft reaches the depth of 1,660 m But once definition drilling does get under way, 78,000 m are planned Shaft-sinking, to cost $44 million, and 340 m of development work are being done by J S Redpath of North Bay, Ont Surface drilling at Lindsley, confined to areas beyond any known mineralization, will gobble up $3 7 million this year Part of that is earmarked for extending the known zone, which is still open

The next biggest item on Falco’s list is $830,000 for underground drilling at Lockerby, near Inco’s Crean Hill mine, west of Sudbury Falconbridge has a deal here with Inco to explore at depth an orebody that goes on to Inco ground Drilling from underground on the 4,299-ft level, one drill will probe an area between 5,000 and 6,500 ft below surface

All this spending has already begun to pay off Falco expects that, in its 1988 annual report, it will report an increase in copper/nickel reserves for the first time since 1971 Figures for 1988 will also show the highest grade since 1952 The increase is attributable mainly to good developments underground at the Craig orebody, on the North Rim of the basin, near the Onaping mine Underground development there, which Knuckey says will eventually lead to a major mining operation, does not get charged to Falco’s exploration budget

What has Knuckey most excited on the North Rim are some very promising copper/platinum/palladium results from holes drilled into a structure in the footwall of known North Rim deposits The structure, perhaps related to one being explored by Inco at McCreedy West, is about two miles long, outcrops at Longvack and has been traced for about 4,000 ft at the Fraser mine in the lower levels A huge program will be necessary to assess the structure, Knuckey says

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