Pattison funds next round at Cartaway

A private company controlled by business entrepreneur James (Jimmy) Pattison has agreed to acquire a 40% participating interest in Cartaway Resources’ (CWA-A) mineral properties in the Okak area of Labrador.

The transaction breathes new life into Cartaway’s exploration efforts, which almost died after drill results from its Cirque project failed to live up to expectations based on visual inspections of the core. The results caused Cartaway’s share price to tumble to below $1 from a high of $26.

“We are back in the game,” Cartaway President John Ivany tells The Northern Miner. “I think what got lost in the shuffle [of negative publicity] is that we have some properties with excellent geological potential. And our crews have done a lot of work to develop good targets.”

Pattison is no stranger to investing in resource projects. During the late 1980s, he provided financial backing to Ivany and Murray Pezim while they were exploring the Eskay Creek project and other properties in northern British Columbia.

Pattison’s company, Ventures, will provide Cartaway with $500,000 to be used for general working capital and $2 million to be spent on the Okak properties, including the Cirque prospect. To retain a 40% interest, Ventures must provide sufficient additional funds to raise its total funding commitment to $8 million.

Armed with the new funds, Ivany says Cartaway should be drilling within a few weeks. A 5,000-metre drill program is planned for the Cirque prospect, which, despite less than impressive results from early drilling, is still believed to have potential for “Voisey’s Bay-type” mineralization.

Ivany says the company retained a consultant with previous experience in Canada’s nickel-producing camps. It is now believed the sulphides previously encountered represent replacement lenses, which have been injected onto the anorthosites and were derived from a sulphide source at depth.

An electromagnetic survey is under way to help select drill-hole locations.

“We still think it is an interesting target,” Ivany says. “What we will be endeavoring to do is go down in the system and hit the [projected] feeder zone.”

Cartaway has carried out geophysical work on the LB-H property 20 km north of Cirque. A flat-lying, strong conductor overlain by fluvial-glacial gravels will be drill-tested this fall.

A survey is also planned for the LB-J property, 10 km north of Cirque, where two holes earlier this year intersected low-grade copper and nickel values at the base of an 8-metre-thick troctolite sill. Both properties are subject to the agreement with Ventures.

Ivany insists that no visual estimates of sulphide content will be released from the next round of drilling. “You might say, once-bitten, twice-shy,” he says. “We will only report results once assays are in hand.” As for the previous drilling, wherein visual estimates of sulphide content were not confirmed by assay results, Ivany says: “Our problem was that the geologist on site made a mistake. There was chalcopyrite in brief intervals of the quantities described, but it was not consistent over the reported interval.”