Nord launches exploration in Swayze greenstone belt

Though best known for its mineral projects in Australia and Southeast Asia, Nord Pacific (NORPY-Q) plans to spend up to $4.8 million exploring an advanced gold project in Ontario’s Swayze greenstone belt.

The company recently signed an agreement to acquire up to a 65% interest in the project from Young-Shannon Gold Mines (YSG-V), which had previously carried out more than 100,000 ft. of drilling on the property.

This work is reported to have identified resources of 1 million tons grading 0.2 oz. gold per ton on the C gold zone. A higher grade zone — known as the C-Prime gold zone — showed drill-indicated potential of 695,787 tons at 0.34 oz. gold.

The C zone is still open at depth and along strike. Recent drilling by Young-Shannon is reported to have extended the known mineralization significantly to the east, though a resource in this area has not yet been quantified.

To earn the interest, Nord must spend $4.8 million within 42 months. A first-phase program is already under way, consisting of data compilation, mapping, line-cutting, geophysics, core relogging, environmental baseline studies and core drilling.

Nord also signed an agreement with Emerald Isle Resources (EIR-V), which allows it to earn up to a 70% interest in the junior’s land package contiguous to Young-Shannon’s ground. To earn the interest, Nord must spend $800,000 over 48 months.

Nord President Pierce Carson says work to date has identified a resource “of at least 240,000 oz.” on only a small portion of a mineralized structure, most of which remains untested. The company’s exploration program on the Emerald Isle properties will attempt to expand this resource and determine the minability of the deposits.

“If sufficient reserves can be delineated, our intention would be to move to early production,” Carson adds.

The Swayze greenstone belt — an assemblage of east-west striking, steeply dipping Archean felsic and mafic flows, pyroclastics and metasediments — is considered by many to be the western extension of the Abitibi Superbelt, which hosts many important base and precious metals deposits in northwestern Quebec and in northern Ontario’s Kirkland Lake and Timmins camps.