Inco lengthens zone at Voisey’s Bay — No economic nickel found beyond Eastern Deeps

Economic grades of nickel, copper and cobalt remain confined to the roughly west-to-east striking band of known zones at Voisey’s Bay, Labrador, reports Inco (n-t).

The major’s Voisey’s Bay Nickel unit continues to explore Block 1, the claim block on which all the known reserves and resources of the Voisey’s Bay project have been found. The length of the newest zone, Reid Brook, has been extended to 1,100 metres. This zone lies beneath, but is partly contiguous with, the Discovery Hill portion of the relatively low-grade Western Extension zone. The Reid Brook zone remains open to the east. Inco reports that the latest hole at Reid Brook hit 30 metres of massive sulphide mineralization at 800 metres below surface. Grades were not released.

Sixty-five holes have now been drilled on the Reid Brook zone, and a preliminary estimate of its resource and of the shallow resources of the Discovery Hill zone is being calculated.

Ninety-six drill holes have been completed on Eastern Deeps, where nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization ranges from 600 to 1,000 metres below surface. Inco reports that drilling several kilometres beyond the known limits of Eastern Deeps had resulted in intervals of nickel and copper sulphide mineralization. However, no economic grades have been encountered.

Several kilometres east of Inco’s drills, a joint venture consisting of Columbia Yukon Resources (cyr-a), International CanAlaska Resources (ica-v) and Falconbridge (fl-t) continues to search for an eastern extension of Eastern Deeps but has yet to come across any economic nickel-copper-cobalt grades.

Inco’s next geophysical targets include areas south of the Western Extension zone and an area north of the Ovoid and Eastern Deeps zones, where troctolite chemically identical to that found within the known mineralized zones has been found.

As of early July, nearly 200,000 metres in 400 holes had been drilled at Voisey’s Bay.

Meanwhile, the 26-day strike at Inco’s Sudbury operations took its toll on the company’s second-quarter earnings. Income amounted to US$16 million, compared with US$61 million in the same period in 1996.

The strike materialized on the books as a US$20-million after-tax expense, and this — combined with lower realized prices for nickel, cobalt and copper, and increased production costs, due in part to a scheduled reconstruction of one of the furnaces at PT Inco in Indonesia — had an unwelcome effect on Inco’s bottom line.