Inco options Wilanour’s Red Lake play

Nickel giant Inco (TSE) can earn a 50% interest in four of Wilanour Resources’ (TSE) properties near Red Lake, Ont.

Three of the properties — Wolf Bay, Slate Bay and Trout Bay — are base metal plays. The other, in Heyson Twp., is a gold bet.

Trout Bay, 26 km west of Red Lake, is the largest of the four, consisting of 66 leased claims, 58 patented claims and three licences of occupation covering about 1,912 hectares.

The property is underlain by an interlayered sequence of

northwest-southeast-trending metavolcanics and metasediments which are cut by a series of gabbro sills. Most of the units are highly deformed and metamorphosed.

Exploration by Wilanour in the 1960s discovered the Highgrade zone deposit which contains 113,160 tonnes of massive sulphide mineralization grading 1.5% copper, 7.86% zinc, 64.46 grams silver and 0.24 grams gold per tonne. The zone, which plunges steeply to the north, has been tested only to the 60-metre level.

Elsewhere on the property, airborne geophysical responses, coincident with copper-zinc-mineralized horizons, have been delineated. Other targets include nickel-copper mineralization in sheared ultramafic schists and gold mineralization within a marble horizon.

To earn its interest, Inco must pay $250,000 and spend $1.5 million on exploration over five years. It is required to pay $50,000 cash upon signing and spend $100,000 on exploration in the first year. Upon Inco exercising its option, the two companies will form a joint venture to continue exploring and developing the properties.

Exploration in 1993, budgeted at $400,000, will be carried out by Inco Exploration and Technical Services (IETS) on behalf of Inco. In an interview with The Northern Miner, E.J. Debicki, Ontario manager of exploration for IETS, said the program will focus on Trout Bay. Work will consist of gridding, geological mapping, magnetic and horizontal loop electromagnetic surveys and trenching. A small, 800-1,000-metre drill program will be carried out in the late fall.

In other news, the Ontario Court of Justice has fined Wilanour $125,000 in conjunction with a tailings dam breach in 1991 which resulted in effluent material discharging into Red Lake. The gap was subsequently closed. Also, Aurelio Petracchi has been elected president, succeeding Glenn Ives who resigned from the board of directors in June.