Wallbridge follows the chlorine pathway to PGEs

Wallbridge Mining (WM-T, WLBMF-O) decided to follow the path of chlorine in the Sudbury Igneous Complex, and in doing so, hit upon platinum group elements (PGE).

The company — which is joint ventured with Pele Mountain Resources (gem-v, pmnhf-o) on the Pele property, in the northern part of the Sudbury mining camp — found “weakly anomalous concentrations” of PGEs by targeting a large breccia corridor rich in chlorine.

While the origin of the geological structure on the property is magmatic, the geological theory is that in the later cooling stages, vast amounts of water washed around the fringes of the intrusive body. The chlorine that was present served as a negative ion, sucking the PGEs out of the melt.

“Chlorine formed metal-chloride complexes, dissolved in hydrothermal fluid, and pushed out along the structure into the footwall,” says Wallbridge’s vice-president of exploration, Bruce Jago. “By analyzing the Sudbury breccia, we can develop vectors towards mineralization on the basis of chlorine concentration.”

The newly discovered zone runs along an 8-km strike length within a corridor that can be as wide as 2 km in the southern part of the property. And while Jago concedes it is still early and the project remains grassroots, the company likened the discovery to breccia rocks hosting copper and PGE mineralization at Xstrata’s (XSRAF-O, XTA-L) Strathcona mine and FNX Mining’s (FNX-T, FNXMF-O) McCreedy West mine, roughly 8 km south.

Wallbridge, which is running the exploration program, can earn a 72.5% interest in the property by funding work to feasibility and by arranging financing for construction of a mine.

While it is now line-cutting at Pele, it plans to start with a geophysical survey in January with drill testing coming by the end of the first quarter. The company has roughly $5.5 million to spend on exploration programs for the coming year.

Wallbridge shares have traded between 73 and 28 over the last 52 weeks and the company has roughly 76 million shares outstanding. At presstime, its shares were trading at around 32.