Assean drilling resumes

Drilling is under way again at the Assean Lake property in north-central Manitoba, operated by International Curator Resources (IC-T).

The new program entails up to 4,500 metres of drilling, mainly to follow up on geophysical and geochemical surveys last summer. Those surveys indicated anomalies along strike from three known gold zones, Hunt, B-52, and BIF, all of which were blind drilling discoveries in 2001.

Curator, which is earning a 60% interest in the project from Rare Earth Metals (REM-V), will also be testing a series of targets on the north shore of Assean Lake, near a showing called Lindal, which was discovered in the 1930s. Those targets are conductive bodies found in a pulse-electromagnetic survey Curator conducted in January.

The showings are hosted by shear zones and by sulphide-facies iron formations along a 12-km length of the 200-km-long Assean Lake shear zone. Drill intersections in the Hunt gold zone have run as high as 9.4 grams gold per tonne over an 8.2-metre core length. The best intersection in B-52 was 10.2 grams per tonne across 4 metres, and the best in the BIF zone was 4.3 grams over 1.8 metres.

Curator’s partner, Rare Earth Metals, has also taken up an option agreement on two adjacent properties. The Row-Lass claims, east of the joint venture’s property, cover an 8-km strike length along the Assean shear; to the west, the Wood claims cover 7 km of the structure. The new land package comprises 33 sq. km.

Under its agreement with privately owned Strider Resources, Rare Earth must spend $1.25 million on exploration over the next five years, and issue 400,000 shares and pay $650,000 in cash to the vendor. Strider received options for 70,000 shares, exercisable at 35, at the time the deal closed.