Int’l Platinum halted pending assay check

The shares of International Platinum (IPC) have been halted from trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange pending an “independent verification” of recently reported assay results from its property in La Paz Cty., Ariz.

“We concluded that it was in the best interests of everyone, including shareholders, that an independent evaluation take place,” said Neil Winchester, the TSE’s Manager of Market Surveillance. The shares have also been halted in the U.S. on the over-the-counter market known as NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation). In a telephone interview, IPC President Lee Furlong told The Northern Miner that he was “absolutely surprised” by the TSE’s reaction.

“They have taken a position which is very unfortunate for our shareholders. To say we’re offended by it is being quite mild.”

IPC has been the centre of intense investor interest ever since it became involved in the Arizona property, the precise location of which is still a secret. The shares were trading at about 10 cents in early January and have since climbed to about $1.20 on huge volumes, lately an average of about 2 million shares every trading day up until the halt.

The TSE’s call for independent verification was announced in an IPC press release dated March 29.

The independent investigation will entail some delay for the project. But, said Furlong, “we’re not going to fold up and we’re not going to go away. It’s not a sham and it’s not a ruse.”

“Nobody’s a bigger skeptic than we are (over IPC’s project). I’ve been in the business 34 years (as a geophysicist with Placer in Australia and Mt. Isa) and I’m not going to end my career with a sham,” he said.

In the latest release, IPC set out the most detailed account so far on the Arizona property and the work being done.

IPC initially took 47 post-hole samples from the “BRX bulk site” to a depth of 2 ft. each. That returned an average gold grade of 0.152 oz. per ton. “Additionally, the majority of samplings also returned some platinum values of importance,” the release stated. No indication of the range of values in the samples nor the dimensions of the mineralized zone have been given as yet. The company then used an X-ray Defraction (XRD) technique to determine “the type of mineralization and the potential geological setting.” The company also says that the XRD technique “confirms that the genesis of the mineralization is most likely volcanic.”

It also reports that free gold, petzite (Ag3AuTe2), hessite (Ag2Te), argenopyrite (AgFe2S3) and platinum group metals were identified from the minus-270 mesh (0.056 mm, or 56 microns) fraction analysis.

After XRD, another test followed, which the release called a “Precious Metal Authentication Program.”

This involved commissioning “an independent assay laboratory to treat by a `fire assay’ procedure 24 pounds” of a composite bulk sample. According to the release, this required the production of a “silver dore bar which contains the majority of the precious metals and a lead dore bar representing a reprocessing of the slags.”

Gregory Iseman of Iseman Consulting, the company that conducted the fire assay, said of his technique that “there is no black box. It’s just a variation of a standard fire assay” in which, rather than “slagging” the base metals, the assayer tries to recover all the metallic particles in the lead button. Normally, he said, the base metals would report to the slag and the precious metals only to the button.

According to the company, the total precious metal contents of the bars were 0.247 oz. gold, 1.086 oz. silver, 0.351 oz. platinum and 0.123 oz. palladium per ton.

The company also noted that a regional sampling program, performed 600 ft. in the four principal compass directions from a mid-point, returned values ranging from 0.159 to 0.229 oz. gold per ton, 0.179 to 0.230 oz. platinum and 0.053 to 0.084 oz. palladium.

The company is awaiting assay results on a 30-hole augur and rotary drill program and on another 11-hole regional drilling effort.