Quaterra tables Union Bay drill results

Vancouver — A 4-hole drill program at the Union Bay project in Alaska has returned narrow zones of platinum-palladium mineralization.

Quaterra Resources (QTA-V) reports that the first two holes of the 360-metre program tested the North zone, where 162 chip samples were collected, yielding up to 17.3 grams combined platinum-palladium.

Twenty-three of the samples returned values greater than 0.1 gram platinum-palladium, with eight yielding better than 1 gram. Hole 1 was drilled in the westerly direction and returned 10.6 grams platinum and 0.56 gram palladium over 0.5 metre from a down-hole depth of 19.1 metre. Hole 2 was drilled in a northeasterly direction and cut 0.42 gram platinum and 0.02 gram palladium over 0.6 metre from 50.1 metres down-hole.

The last two holes were collared some 3.2 km to the west at the Mt. Burnett zone. Hole 3 hit three mineralized sections grading up to 0.16 gram platinum and 0.12 gram palladium over 3.7 metres at a down-hole depth of 0.6 metre. The final hole hit two zones including a 0.3-metre section running 1 gram platinum and 0.16 gram palladium from 28.4 metres down-hole.

“The discontinuous nature of stratiform platinum group element mineralization in occurrences such as the J-M reef in the Stillwater Complex is well-documented,” says Quaterra President Thomas Patton. “The large size of our target, combined with widespread high-grade surface samples, suggests that continued exploration should be able to identify zones with minable widths and grades.”

Situated near Ketchikan, the 5-by-10-km Union Bay complex shows the characteristic zonal features of a Ural-Alaska complex, with a 1-km-wide dunite core on the southeastern side moving through wehrlite- and magnetite-bearing olivine clinopyroxenites to hornblendite and gabbro on the margins. The complex appears as a lopolith folded along a later-staged west-northwest-trending axis.

Quaterra is earning a half-interest in Union Bay by spending US$1 million on exploration and paying US$100,000 in cash over four years. Quaterra also agreed to issue 200,000 shares of its common stock to International Freegold Mineral Development (ITF-V) — 100,000 shares upon approval of the transaction by the Canadian Venture Exchange and 100,000 shares on May 1, 2002.