Mr. Donkeyman, I think your geologist is pretty smart in spite of Mr. Whiteside's apparent belief in IR-types and pre-Ovoid-1994-geological-models and gravity sensing 1 meter of mineralization at 170 meters.
First, Donner-Teck's 11% nickel grades are almost 3 times higher than ore DFR discovered in the Ovoid, Mini-Ovoid, Western Extension, or Eastern Deeps orebodies (i.e., today's Financial Post got it wrong again--INCO in Feb-97 announced the Reid Brook or renamed-"Western Deeps" orebody below DFR's Western Extension.) Donner-Tech's high-grade intercept is 13 meters below the troctolite; therefore, their thin little high-grade is probably not similar to Voisey's Bay type orebodies. BTW, we did hit some rich stuff >5% and <1 metre at DFR's Reddog Prospect--it's along a fault zone and to date has minimal tonnage and is too deep to be economic.
Second, my geophysics sources in Donner-Tech's camp tell me the gravity anomaly may be a "red herring"--the detailed gravity data weren't even processed or interpreted prior to last week's 0.5-m/2% announcement. Drilling then was based on an EM conductor (e.g., sometimes press releases are not correct when it comes to geophysics). To my knowledge, gravity techniques have not been instrumental in the discovery of any economic nickel orebody in Labrador.
Congrats to Donner-Tech if they have finally found gravity to be useful in spotting drillholes--at DFR we drilled and found that barren high-density Nain ortho-gneiss caused most of our Bouguer gravity anomalies. Big problem with gravity at Voisey's is the rugged terrain--this causes errors in elevation and inner-zone terrain corrections with noise-envelopes locally approaching 0.5 milligal. I found gravity to be useful for regional and structural mapping--and troctolites do have an interesting Bouguer signature. Of course, the shallow Ovoid (+30 million tons at a depth of 15 meters) "screamed" using expensive gravity--but every geophysical technique (even the inexpensive VLF and Mise-a-la-Masse) "screamed" over the Ovoid. FYI, Maxmin is the technique credited with DFR DDH-95-7 in Jan-95 and in hitting the Ovoid and causing the DFR stock to really take off.
Investors, take a good look at some of the +10% nickel grades coming out of the Cape Smith Belt (Raglan) and Australia (Kambalda) many with later drilling are found to be along large shears which has concentrated and "moved" the pentlandite-rich sulfides from low-grade mafic and ultramafic gabbros, peridotites, and komatiites. South Voisey may be more similar to these type of nickel deposits than to Voisey's Bay. If so, getting mineable tonnages may be a problem for Donner-Tech.
More drilling will tell the tale.
Good Luck, T. |
