Expatriate eyes Logan-Wolverine Combo

Vancouver Back in 2001, Expatriate Resources (EXR-V) halted a 2-year effort to develop Teck Cominco‘s (TEK-T) Kudz Ze Kayah deposit with its 60% owned Wolverine base metal find in the Finlayson district of the Yukon. Today, the junior is once again looking to advance Wolverine, this time with the Logan property some 170 km to the southwest.

Expatriate agreed to pick up a 60% stake in Logan from Energold Minerals (EGD-V). The price tag comes in at $1 million with half of the amount payable at commercial production. The deal calls for an initial payment of $50,000, plus three installments of $50,000 paid over 18 months and $300,000 worth of Expatriate shares. As a partial payment, the Harlan Meade-led company issued 2.5 million shares. Almaden Minerals (AMM-T) will retain a 40% carried interest on the property

The Logan property lies 96 km west of Watson Lake and hosts a mineral resource of 12.3 million tonnes grading 6.17% zinc and 26.4 grams silver per tonne. The calculation is based on 103 diamond drill holes completed from 1982 through 1989.

A 1.1-km-long zone of sheeted fracture and stockwork vein mineralization hosted in granodiorite defines the deposit. The steeply dipping tabular zone ranges from 50 to 140 metres in width. About 90% of the total resource lie within 200 metres of the surface and are considered amenable to open-pit mining.

The Main zone of mineralization is open at depth indicating the potential for addition of underground reserves that could supplement open pit ores.

Expatriate is evaluating the development of Logan as 3,000-to-4,000 tonne per day open pit operation with an adjoining flotation mill facility, which would also process material from the Wolverine deposit.

According to the company, one of the main benefits of a combined operation is a better quality concentrate due to reduced contaminants through blending the high-selenium Wolverine ores with the very clean zinc-silver mineralization of the Logan deposit. The cost benefits of reduced penalties in the resulting concentrates could help offset the cost of hauling the ore some 170 km from Wolverine to Logan. Expatriate also intends to investigate the potential for heavy media separation techniques to upgrade Wolverine ores prior to shipping to the proposed Logan mill facility, lowering ore haulage costs.

Early staged modeling suggests that the Logan-Wolverine development could produce about 220,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate, along with copper and lead concentrates containing approximately 5 million oz silver and 18,000 oz gold, annually.

Expatriate owns a 60.6% interest in the Wolverine deposit with Atna Resources (ATN-T) holding the remaining 39.4%. At last count, the deposit held a resource of 6.2 million tonnes grading 12.66% zinc, 1.33 % copper, 1.55% lead, 371 grams silver and 1.76 grams gold.