Tribute options Confederation Lake property

Toronto-based Tribute Minerals (TBM-V) has inked an option deal to acquire Noranda‘s (NRD-T) 155-sq.-km Confederation Lake property some 40 km southeast of Red Lake in northwestern Ontario.

Tribute can acquire the property by spending $3.5 million on exploration over four years, including 16,000 metres of diamond drilling. Noranda can back into a 50% stake in any deposit containing an independently verified 8 million tonnes of massive sulphide or one million ounces of gold by spending 1.5 times Tribute’s spending on the property. If Noranda exercises its back-in option, a joint venture will be formed on the deposit area. Otherwise, Noranda will retain a 2% net smelter return royalty.

Noranda is also entitled to a one-time cash payment of $500,000 on submission of the first scoping study on the first project area in which the company does not exercise its back-in option. A further $1.5 million is payable upon commercial production from that project area.

Noranda retains the right to carry out, at its own risk, an exploration drilling program to confirm Tribute’s independent scoping study. The agreement anticipates that there may be more than one project area on the property.

The Confederation lake property is underlain by the Archean-age Woman Lake and Confederation Lake assemblages of the Uchi geological subprovince and represents the eastern continuation of the Red Lake greenstone belt.

Noranda’s recent work focused on geological and geochemical modeling, diamond drilling, and pulse electromagnetic surveying.

Lithogeochemistry of the favourable metavolcanic horizons identified widespread areas of primary alteration, including intense sodium depletion and magnesium enrichment. Sulphide mineralization is associated with both stratabound and crosscutting alteration and metal enrichment typical to volcanogenic massive sulphides (VMS) hydrothermal systems. Mineralization is similar to the Mattabi and Geco mines, and hosted the past-producing South Bay mine on Confederation Lake adjacent to the property. Selco Mining produced 1.6 million tonnes grading 14% zinc, 2.5% copper and 120 grams silver per tonne from South Bay between 1971 and 1981.Significant drill intersections on the property include:

• 7.34% zinc and 1.4% copper over 9.5 metres,
• 19.1% zinc and 2.2% copper over 6.3 metres,
• 30.62% zinc and 3.3% copper over 3.8 metres, and
• 4.01% copper and 0.17% zinc over 3.35.

Drilling also cut disseminated copper-zinc stringer mineralization and returned up to 0.53% zinc and 0.14% copper over 45.6 metres.

The property host: the Dixie No. 18 zone where Noranda reported inferred resources of 110,000 tonnes grading 12.5% zinc and 0.5% copper; the Dixie No. 3 zone (91,000 tonnes of 10% zinc and 1% copper); and Copperlode E-zone (160,000 tonnes of 8.3% zinc and 1.1% copper.

Tribute’s Fredart property is located along strike of the property and contains the Copperlode Main zone with an historic resource of 428,000 tonnes running 1.56% copper to a depth of 100 metres.

In addition to the Confederation Lake property’s base metal potential, Tribute plans also to look its gold potential.