Starfield sets sights on high-grade

Vancouver — Armed with $1.6 million, Starfield Resources (SRU-V) hopes to enhance the economic prospects of the Ferguson Lake copper-nickel-platinum-palladium project by targeting the newly discovered high-grade zone on the Nunavut property.

The junior added $157,000 to its coffers by selling 313,750 follow-through units priced at 50 each to Mtax Mineral Limited partnership. A unit holds one flow through share and one warrant, which is exercisable into a share at 55 for a period of 18 months. Starfield added an additional $1.5 million through a private placement of 3 million units priced at 50 each. A unit holds one share and one warrant exercisable at 75 for a one-year period.

The funds will be used to follow up last year’s discovery of a high-grade zone that was cut while Starfield was defining the limits of mineralization at the West zone.

Hole 101 cut a 0.35-metre-thick zone, 15 metres above the massive sulphides, yielding 103 grams palladium and 26.7 grams platinum per tonne at a down-hole depth of 962.3 metres. Subsequent check assay revealed that the interval also contained 2.74 gram rhodium. Rhodium is a platinum group metal fetching US$750 per oz., compared to recent prices of US$486 for platinum and US$444 for palladium.

Drill hole 104, collared 500 metres east of hole 101, also cut the massive sulphide horizon returning 1.24% copper, 0.94% nickel, 0.09% cobalt, 2.27 grams palladium an 0.3 gram platinum over 8.8 metres from 843.6 metres down-hole. A little over 101 metres below this intercept, the low sulphide zone was encountered yielding 9.9 grams palladium, 1.44 grams platinum over 0.5 metres.

The new zone is believed to be a separate, subparallel horizon within the host gabbro sill. It may represent a distinct mineralizing event caused by primary differentiation during cooling of the original sill.

Last year’s drilling focused on the West zone, which hosts the bulk of the inferred resource at Ferguson Lake (51.7 million tonnes grading 0.92% copper, 0.58% nickel and 1.44 grams combined platinum and palladium, at a cutoff grade of 1% combined copper and nickel).

Lying 160 km south of Baker Lake, copper mineralization at the West zone was initially discovered in the 1950s by Inco (N-T) and followed up three decades later by a unit of Homestake Mining. Inco pegged the West zone with a resource of 6.4 million tonnes grading 0.87% copper and 0.75% nickel, whereas Homestake discovered showings of platinum, palladium and cobalt mineralization in sulphide-bearing outcrops.

A manual resource estimate for the East I zone comes in at 2.9 million tonnes grading 1% copper, 0.8% nickel and 1.2 grams combined platinum-palladium. The East II zone tallies 1.3 million tonnes grading 0.9% copper, 0.8% nickel and 1.2 grams combined platinum-palladium.

Starfield has earned a 100% interest in the 200-sq.-km property by paying $75,000 in cash, issuing 4.25 million shares and spending $1.7 million on exploration.