A deal with
The Montreal-based junior already owns several PGE properties in northern Ontario and Quebec, its most recent acquisition being the Tyko Lake polymetallic property in Ontario.
The latest deal, which is subject to regulatory approval, would see Freewest earn half of Royal Standard’s interest in 80 unpatented mining claims in the state’s Bunkerville mining district. In return, Freewest must spend US$100,000 on exploration and pay $25,000 in cash in each of the next two years; a commitment of $250,000 for drilling completes the earn-in requirements.
The partnership comes on the heels of an agreement between Royal Standard and
Exploration in the Bunkerville district was active in the early 1900s but has since waned. In 1996, Falconbridge renewed interest in the area by flying an airborne survey.
Numerous showings are known, including the Key West platinum deposit, where crews outlined just over 200,000 tonnes grading 4.46 grams combined platinum and palladium per tonne, plus 1.5% copper, 1.09% nickel and 0.015% cobalt. According to the Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, platinum and palladium in the deposit are associated with disseminated interstitial grains of pyrrhotite and copper-nickel sulphides in a hornblende pyroxenite dyke.
Regionally, the district is underlain by a Proterozoic basement complex dominated by felsic-mafic schists and gneisses intruded by gabbroic intrusives. Younger (but still Precambrian-aged), structurally controlled mafic-ultramafic dykes are locally abundant and host most of the known copper-nickel-PGE showings.
The airborne survey suggests that the property is underlain by a structural zone forming the locus of several large, altered dykes and a source pluton, which could represent a Sudbury-type offset dyke environment for magmatic and remobilized hydrothermal mineralization. No fewer than 15 electromagnetic conductors were detected in the survey, and some of the known showings display a hydrothermal overprint.
Royal Standard, which continues to operate the project, plans to begin surface work shortly. The conductors plus several geochemical anomalies are targeted for immediate follow-up.
Meanwhile, Freewest has raised $1.2 million in two separate private placements that saw a combined 5.4 million shares issued. The placements came attached with an equal number of warrants with strike prices of 25 or 33 each. The warrants are valid till mid-2001 and, if exercised, would provide the company with $1.5 million.
Proceeds are earmarked for projects in New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec. Summaries of recent exploration carried out on three of those properties are given below.
Clarence Stream
At the wholly owned Clarence Stream property, in southwestern New Brunswick, crews are performing follow-up work on two broad soil geochemical anomalies enriched in gold, arsenic and antimony. Recent stripping at the larger of the two has uncovered high-grade, intrusion-related gold mineralization.
Trench 1 uncovered 15 metres of sugary-textured quartz vein hosted by mineralized hornfels and siliciclastic metasediments. The exposed portion of the vein varies from 1 to greater than 3 metres in thickness and carries up to 264.9 grams gold per tonne. Grades in the wallrock run up to 4.28 grams.
At Trench 2, about 350 metres along strike to the east, was exposed a series of sheeted quartz veins in sheared, calc-silicate hornfels intruded by gabbroic sills. Although the onset of heavy snowfall prevented the trench from being channel-sampled, a grab sample of one quartz vein yielded 5.86 grams gold, while another sample of the heavily sulphidized host rock assayed 73.4 grams.
Grab samples of quartz vein and calc-silicate float in the smaller anomaly yielded 25.4 and 84.3 grams gold. The anomaly lies 700 metres to the east and straddles a metasediment-granite contact.
To date, gold mineralization at Clarence Stream has been traced over a strike length of 4 km, in the metamorphic aureole of the Saint George batholith. Another 4 km of that contact zone is covered by the property.
Known showings are associated with quartz veining, biotite hornfels, skarn and hydrothermal breccia. Showings of base metals, tin, tungsten and molybdenum are also common; all are typical of the geological setting.
Freewest is carrying out an induced-polarization survey over both anomalies in preparation for trenching and diamond drilling. The larger anomaly measures 900 metres long by 500 metres wide; the smaller one, 800 by 400 metres.
Bylund
The Bylund property is in the Matawin gold belt, just northwest of Thunder Bay. Ownership is shared equally between Freewest and
Exploration is focused on a 300-metre-wide, northeasterly trending deformation corridor characterized by intense iron carbonate, sericitic, albitic and silica alteration. Shear fractures hosting quartz veins and stockworks are prevalent in trenches, with those bearing moderate-to-abundant pyrite and arsenopyrite yielding the highest grades so far: 123 grams gold over 0.5 metre.
Two holes were recently sunk to test mineralization at depth. Though results proved discouraging, one hole did cut 102.6 metres of intensely altered and deformed volcanic breccias, returning up to 5.1 grams gold over narrow intervals. As at surface, the higher grades are found in local pockets of quartz veining and pyrite and arsenopyrite mineralization.
Half of the corridor’s width remains untested, and Freewest notes that the source of 474 pristine gold grains obtained in two till samples taken 200 metres up-ice from the deformation corridor has not yet been found. The till samples were taken by the Ontario Geological Survey as apart of a Quaternary mapping and overburden sampling program of the Shebandowan greenstone belt.
To pinpoint future drill targets, Freewest will begin its own till-sampling program in the spring.
Tyko Lake
On the eastern side of Lake Superior, Freewest and
Recent prospecting in the area discovered a new showing of mineralized hornblendite and pyroxenite containing up to 3.84% nickel, 1% copper, 1.59 grams palladium and 0.84 gram platinum. Higher grades were obtained in coarse-grained, pyroxenite bearing moderate-to-abundant, disseminated and net-textured pyrite, pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite.
Freewest notes that the mineralized ultramafic rocks follow a prominent, 6-km-long magnetic high that terminates just off the property’s northeastern boundary, at an 8-km-wide, circular magnetic high. The circular anomaly is associated with an unmapped mafic intrusion in which several new copper showings have been found.
To earn their interests, the partners must spend a combined $400,000 on exploration over three years, pay $120,000 in cash and issue 500,000 shares to the vendors.
Ground geophysical surveys are under way.
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