Indo Pacific trenching exposes showing

The East Indies may no longer be a trendy destination for Canadian junior companies, but their mineral potential is good enough that some persistent explorers are still working quietly on solid projects in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Papua New Guinea specialist Indo Pacific Resources (IPF-A) is making progress on two of its many gold projects in the country — one on New Guinea; the other on New Hanover, the westernmost of the Solomon Islands.

At the Kru River prospect on the Sumwari property, about 100 km northwest of the Porgera mine on the main island, a ground magnetic survey is now complete. The survey, which covered a 2.2-sq.-km area where soils carried elevated concentrations of gold, revealed the boundaries of the intrusive rocks and located fault structures.

The survey is being continued to the east, and magnetic measurements are being taken on a tighter, 5-metre grid spacing in areas around the soil anomaly.

Re-sampling of soils over the prospect verified the earlier results and confirmed that the gold mineralization — with grades in the 5-to-12-gram-per-tonne range — is in an east-striking fracture zone on the southern flank of the soil anomaly. Trenching across the presumed structure exposed the fracture zone and also uncovered some north-striking structures with gold grades of up to 3 grams per tonne. The company expects to have a better idea of the zone’s strike length once the additional magnetic coverage is complete. Drilling is planned for mid-year.

At its 560-sq.-km New Hanover property, stream-sediment samples sent for bulk-leach-extractable gold analysis “confirmed and refined” the results of earlier stream-sediment surveys on the Sania and Taimo Rivers.

The earlier surveys determined gold in dish concentrates and Macnab postulates that analyses of the bulk sample — usually a 500 to 1,000-gram portion leached in cyanide solution for 24 hours — may be detecting fine gold that would have been lost in the panning process that had been used in the first survey.

A 15-km line of hot springs appears to define a northwesterly striking deformation feature, with boulders and subcrops of hydrothermally altered intrusive rocks occurring along its length. The intrusive rocks are silicified and sulphidized with both pyrite and arsenopyrite. Other companies that have explored the area reported gold in panned concentrates of stream sediments, and Indo Pacific plans to map the geology along the streams, sample rock chips, perform a soil survey and dig some trenches.

Indo Pacific also recently concluded an agreement with BHP Minerals, a unit of Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP-N), trading access to BHP’s exploration database for Papua New Guinea for a back-in right on any future exploration licences Indo Pacific may acquire.

The agreement allows BHP to take up a 75% working interest in an individual property if Indo Pacific spends $2 million on that property, or if Indo Pacific accepts a joint venture offer on the property from any third party.

BHP can also exercise its back-in right whenever an exploration licence expires or is renewed. To exercise the option, BHP must pay Indo Pacific four times the amount the junior spends in direct exploration costs on the property between the time the licence is granted and the time the option is exercised.