Starfield has some air let out of the bag

After enjoying a somewhat mysterious climb up the market for the last month, Starfield Resources (SRU-T, SRFDF-O) had some of the air let out of its share price after releasing a summary of its first resource estimate for its Ferguson Lake property in Nunavut.

In Toronto on June 1, the Toronto-based companys shares were off over 7% or 11 to $1.36 on nearly 9 million shares traded.

But the fall in price is small relative to the massive recent gains. Starfield shares started the month of May at just 28 but finished it at $1.47. All the activity prompted a press release on May 13, where the company said it was unaware of any recent material events that could be responsible for the activity.”

Todays announcement put some substance behind speculation of just how robust the deposit may be.

For the Main West zone indicated resources are 15.2 million tonnes grading 0.71% nickel, 1.04% copper, 0.08% cobalt, 1.64 grams per tonne palladium and 0.28 grams per tonne platinum.

The new numbers represent a 76% increase in the indicated category over the 43-101 from a year ago. That estimate put indicated resources at 8.7 million tonnes grading 0.67% nickel, 0.93% copper, 0.08% cobalt, 1.47 grams palladium and 0.21 grams platinum.

The updated estimate includes last year’s 116 drill holes and 20 additional geotechnical holes. A total of 359 exploratory drill holes have been drilled so far.

Starfield is in the midst of a scoping study and says it will follow up on potential high-grade platinum intercepts in the West Zone footwall with drilling this summer.

But, it cautions, platinum and palladium are not yet being used in the economic analysis of the project and are not used in calculating the cut-off value.

However, the company says, the two metals grades are incorporated into the tabulation.

The latest resource estimate uses historical data from the 1950s (173 drill holes) and data collected by Starfield between 1999 and 2006, which totaled 359 holes and 133,214 metres.

Mineralization trends over a 15.5 km strike length with nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, and palladium bearing semi-massive to massive sulphides occurring in lenses.

Starfield has broken the resource in to the east and west sides. Both areas have mineralization at surface and at depth.

The Main West zone sits on the western side which also hosts the Extension West zone and the West zone.

The Main West Zone has a strike length of 2.7 km while the Extension West zone completes the 4.1 km long continuous mineralization of the West Zone.

Resources are based on 50% or higher sulphide contents of the massive sulphide lenses and sheets and do not included any dilution or dilution factors.

Starfield says it has developed an environmentally friendly and energy-efficient hydrometallurgical flowsheet to recover platinum, palladium, cobalt, nickel and copper from sulphides at the property.