Pan African seeks Madagascar nickel

Pan African Mining (PAF-V, PAFRF-O) has hit nickel in Madagascar.

The company says it discovered nickeliferous laterite in an ultramafic body about 1 km long by 250 metres wide. The permitted area — known as Nickel Valley — is in northern Madagascar.

The company describes the orebody as a highly weathered, oval shape. The deposit is open at both ends and at depth; it was delineated through a preliminary program of shallow auger holes and channel-sampling of pits and trenches that reached a maximum of 10 metres deep.

In all, 56 holes were hand-augered to an average depth of 7 metres. The holes were widely spaced to cover the large area encompassed by the orebody. A total of 409 samples were part of the preliminary program, which began in September 2005.

Vancouver-based Pan African calls the results “highly encouraging.” The highest value returned was 2.6% nickel over 2 metres. A total of 109 samples throughout the ultrabasic body returned values greater than 0.5% nickel the company says, with 13 samples returning greater than 1% nickel.

The nickel is associated with minor disseminated chromite and magnesite, as well as traces of cobalt.

This mineralized ultramafic body appears to be associated with several other similar untested ultramafic bodies Pan African has identified within the Nickel Valley permit area.

Pan African is an exploration junior with roughly 10,000 sq. km of property in Madagascar. It’s exploring for gold, uranium, precious stones, base metals and industrial commodities.

Operations are carried out through subsidiary, PAM Madagascar, and its uranium activities are carried out through its 80%-owned subsidiary PAM Atomique.

In April, the company plans to begin more comprehensive trenching and mechanized shallow drilling to further evaluate the orebody.

Deeper diamond drilling will be carried out to evaluate the nature and nickel content of the underlying peridotite host rock below the nickeliferous laterite. A regional sampling program is also planned so the company can start evaluating other ultramafic bodies identified on the property.

“(The deposit) has all of the preliminary earmarks of a potentially important nickeliferous ultramafic belt,” said chairman and chief executive Irwin Olian. “Our nickel program will be run on a simultaneous basis with our gold, diamond and uranium exploration programs.”