Puma hunts high-grade silver in New Brunswick

In late February the Fraser Institute published a survey that labelled New Brunswick the world’s most attractive jurisdiction for mineral exploration, and that sounds about right to Puma Exploration (PUM-V). The Rimouski, Que., based explorer has been defining a potentially large-scale silver camp 20 km north of Bathurst since 2005.

Puma is focused on a 68 sq. km land package called the Nicholas-Denys project that hosts nine deposits running over 10 km of strike length. The most promising mineralization has been a silver-lead-zinc horizon on the southern borders of the property, which also holds a copper-rich skarn and molybdenum-bearing granodiorite plutons. The company has spent US$10 million on exploration at the site since 2005, including 130 drill holes over 31,000 metres.

“So far we’re sure there are two key structures,” president and CEO Marcel Robillard explains during an interview. The first is named the Main fault, and the second is the Rocky-Brook fault.

“We do have a third one, but it hasn’t been defined yet,” Robillard says. Each of these structures is 10 km long, with sulphide lenses or layers running parallel. The depths vary between surface and by around thirty metres, but it is all continuous.

“Now what could make it really rich is if we find that main sulphide lens, and where the transverse fault is cross-cutting the sulphide zones,” he comments.

In 2008, Puma delineated its first resource at Nicholas-Denys, which encompassed the Hache lens and totalled 181,000 indicated tonnes grading 158 grams silver per tonne, 0.8 gram gold, 2% zinc and 1.11% lead for 1.1 million contained oz. silver, 11 million lb. zinc, 5 million lb. lead and 6,200 oz. gold.

Robillard points out that Hache is one of 16 potential lenses on the property, and says the company is aiming at an eventual resource in the realm of 100 million oz. silver.

“When we strip, we see the mineralization, so we know where to put the drill and won’t miss,” Robillard explains. “So far this year we’ve done almost two kilometres of trenching . . . and boom, we find a brand-new lens. Initial results have indicated it is really rich, and we’ll be releasing those shortly. We have around two million compliant oz. silver in just one of the lenses so far. Since then we’ve drilled over 20,000 metres, and all the holes are hitting some nice stuff.”

The first seven holes from Puma’s 2012 drill program continued to hit promising high-grade, gold-silver zones in the Hache lens area, with highlights including 6.4 metres of 446 grams silver, 1.56 grams gold, 2.2% lead and 5.8% zinc starting at 75 metres depth in hole 1204, and a new silver-gold discovery in hole 1207 that includes 1.9 metres of 579 grams silver, 1.42 grams gold, 3.7% lead and 5.8% zinc.

“The thing we’re really happy about from a regional perspective is that thin overburden. It means we can do a lot of the work with excavators, and we don’t have to drill right away,” Robillard says. “That saves us a lot of money. Instead of spending in the range of ten thousand dollars per day, we can do it for one thousand.”

The Nicholas-Denys location offers additional infrastructure that could benefit Puma over the long-run. Being just 20 km away from Bathurst allows workers to commute directly from town and the site is close to paved highways, rail transport, a deepwater port and Xstrata’s (XTA-L) Belledune lead-zinc smelter.

According to Robillard, Puma should be cashed up for the remainder of the year. The company closed two non-brokered private placements worth roughly US$1.7 million over the past two months. Puma issued 5.6 million flow-through units at an issue price of 30¢ per unit.

“We’ll go back with the new transverse-fault model and really look at those historic ore shoots and the intersections with the main massive sulphide,” Robillard concludes.

Puma has 78 million shares outstanding and a $20-million press time market capitalization. The company has been consistently in the 25¢–30¢ range over the first half of 2012, and trades at average daily volumes of 41,500 shares.