After enjoying a somewhat mysterious climb up the market in May, Starfield Resources (SRU-T, SRFDF-O) had some of the air let out of its share price on the release of a resource estimate summary for its Ferguson Lake property in Nunavut.
The Toronto-based company’s shares fell more than 7% or 11 to $1.36 on nearly 9 million shares traded on June 1st, the day it announced the results.
But that drop-off was small, relative to its recent gains. Starfield shares started the month of May at just 28, but finished it at $1.47. All the activity prompted the company to issue a press release in mid-May, saying it was “unaware of any recent material events that could be responsible for the activity.”
The resource summary put some substance behind speculation regarding just how robust the deposit might be.
For the Main West zone, indicated resources are 15.2 million tonnes grading 0.71% nickel, 1.04% copper, 0.08% cobalt, 1.64 grams per tonne palladium and 0.28 gram platinum.
The new numbers represent a 76% increase in the indicated category from last year’s estimate, which put indicated resources at 8.7 million tonnes averaging 0.67% nickel, 0.93% copper, 0.08% cobalt, 1.47 grams palladium and 0.21 gram platinum.
The updated estimate includes last year’s 116 drill holes and 20 additional geotechnical holes. A total of 359 exploratory drill holes have been drilled so far.
Starfield is in the midst of a scoping study and plans to follow up on potential high-grade platinum intercepts in the West Zone footwall with drilling this summer.
But the company cautions that platinum and palladium are not yet being used in the economic analysis of the project and were not used in calculating the cutoff value.
However, the two metals are included in the indicated resource estimate.
The latest resource estimate uses historical data from the 1950s (173 drill holes) and data collected by Starfield between 1999 and 2006, which totalled 359 holes and 133,214 metres.
Mineralization trends over a 15.5-km strike length with nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, and palladium-bearing semi-massive to massive sulphides occurring in lenses.
Starfield has broken the resource into the east and west sides. Mineralization has been encountered in both areas at surface and at depth.
The Main West zone sits on the western side, which also hosts the Extension West zone and the West zone.
The Main West zone has a strike length of 2.7 km while the West and Extension West zones together host 4.1 km of continuous mineralization.
Only samples containing 50% or more sulphide were used to determine massive sulphide intersections, and current resources do not include any dilution or dilution factors.
Starfield says it has developed an environmentally friendly and energy efficient hydrometallurgical flow sheet to recover platinum, palladium, cobalt, nickel and copper from sulphides at the property.
Be the first to comment on "New resource cools Starfield"