Hello All, and thank you all for the kind words, however, I think you should thank Howard not me.
Russett, believe me, I do understand where you are coming from, and to some degree I agree, but only in part. I do not advocate spending money without a coherent plan. What I do advocate is spending where we will either get the greatest likelihood of a blue sky hit with the least amount of $ and time invested, and/or where the Canadian market is predisposed to assign speculative fever/excitement. Building up a war chest by doing nothing but production in the RSA would be prudent, but it would not assign significant value to our shares and it would not grow the company.
The beauty of valuable mineral plays like diamonds and platinum is that they have the potential of being self financing and are attractive to debt financing as the payback is potentially so short. Getting only one of these plays up and running to the point that profits are coming in however, can take five to eight years and the market probably will not assign value until then.
A blue sky home run on the other hand can assign value now and finding one every couple of years keeps assigning speculative value while the earlier discoveries are being put into production.
Bottom line, no hot air being blown into the balloon and it starts to deflate like we have...
So what about the NWT? Has everything been found that is going to be found? Has Kennecott in fact written us off? Well, not to my knowledge, unless another poster knows something I don't. From what I hear, the aforementioned major, plans to be back exploring under Lac de Gras this winter and actively doing the same over the ground they optioned from TAH northwest of us and on which they discovered several pipes last year.
No, they are not interested in dikes, but to quote Howard, “if SUF found one like Snap Lake, we (SUF) certainly would be”. Dikes like Snap, which I think we can all agree is a fairly unique deposit with exceptional ore, do not come along too often, and while I would not expect Kennecott, a major, to bother with a deposit that could not be put into production at a rate of more than 5,000tpd, most smaller players including SUF would be more than happy to have it. It is simply a matter scale. Big fish need big bait, little fish find worms quite tasty.
In case nobody recognized the analogy, we are the little fish.
On the other hand, little fish that find a school of minnows can grow up to be big fish in a hurry and need only eat two or three minnows at a time to fatten up. So where are the minnows. Well, clearly not a Munn Lake which was pretty evident last year. All we probably have are worms there and while tasty, they are kind of short and skinny.
However, if you swim almost due north until you are nicely sandwiched between Aber's and DiaMet's economic pipes (minnows) to the south, and Tahera's economic pipes (minnows) to the north, you will find Yamba Lake…
“No! Not that old Yamba Lake story again”, you say,… “give it a rest, its been explored before”… DeBeer's even took a look at it, there's nothing there”…
If you will quit flapping your gills and let me finish,… you will find some tall weeds, in which Howard feels “if I (he) can't find at least 3 or 4 diamondiferous pipes (tasty minnows) I'll (he'll) eat my (his) hat”!
I think you get the point…
Yes, Yamba was explored by Tanqueray and Fiberclad way back when, principally by use of a 200m spaced geophysical Digem survey and very limited geochemical homework. As a result, TQY found the Torrie Sue and Eddy pipes I believe, the first two as a result of distinct strong mag lows and the latter with a coincident moderate EM high. A couple of years later DB's took a look, but never conducted anymore testing. They simply reviewed the existing geophysical survey, picked out 6-7 targets, drilled them and came up with the Ptarmigan pipe and 6 dry holes. A DB's suite flew over from the RSA, got off the plane, looked at the data, spun on his heel and literally flew back. All DB's was prepared to look at in those days were elephants. Pipes the size of what DMM had found simply were not on their radar screens until ABZ's, MPV's and TAH's grade figures started showing up, but by then, it was too late. If they would have drilled the 8th target Howard said, they would have probably found the T-10 pipe, which is what Cypango did a few years later. But as you know, CAV's pockets ran dry and the property floated until SUF took a look.
No, SUF is not walking away from the NWT, and no, they are not scaling back their efforts here unless you count changing their focus from Munn Lake to Yamba Lake. CJ is extremely high on Yamba and has spent days poring over all of the geophysical and geochemical data, personally selecting the priority drill targets for next spring.
So what do we have to nibble on? Well as you know, SUF ran another geophysical survey over the property last spring at a 100meter spacing this time and on a north-south grid. If you refer back to SUF's summer NR you will note the following:
A till sampling programme, to commence in late July, 1999, will be completed in order to define and trace the origin of the three kimberlitic mineral indicator trains, identified in the Gooseneck Lake area from 1,007 samples collected during August, 1998. These do not appear to be associated with the currently known kimberlite pipes. All three indicator trains have returned positive pyrope, eclogitic and chromite microprobe chemistries suggesting that the primary source kimberlites may have very good diamond potential.
Interpretation of all the new airborne data has been completed and possible diamond drill targets are currently being selected from more than ninety possible kimberlite targets identified from this information. In order to do this, till samples will be collected down-ice of the targets, more than twenty-five of which are ranked as high priority. Land based geophysical targets indicative of kimberlite pipe intrusions will be ground checked this summer (the new S-141 is land based). Diamond drill core testing of targets is expected to follow, after a full review of all the data generated by the current two month sampling programme has been completed.
The 1,007 till samples taken in the summer of 1998 have all been processed as have another 108 taken this summer down and up ice from possible drill targets. Howard's geochemistry plots kick out some pretty interesting numbers including Pyrope garnets (G-10's) sub-plotting as 1-J10, 6-J7's, 11-J5's and 100's of lessor plots.
For those who do not understand the significance of this data:
THE GARNET J-FACTOR: Dawson and Stephens (1975) provided a garnet chemical classification system which includes the highly significant G-10 group of peridotitic garnets typically present in diamondiferous kimberlites in Archons. Gurney (1984) states that “- in a general way, kimberlites with an abundant very sub-calcic G-10 garnets (eg. Finsch pipe) tend to have higher diamond contents than kimberlites with only a few barely sub-calcic G-10 garnets (eg. Kao pipe).” In an initial attempt to semi-quantify such data for Falconbridge in 1980, John Gurney devised the peridotitic garnet J-factor scoring grid plotting Cr2O3 vs CaO. Garnets with less than 2% Cr2O3 are disregarded, thus excluding most eclogitic garnets from consideration.
Thus G-10 garnets plotting high in Cr2O3 vs CaO have been found to be typically sourced from significantly diamondiferous kimberlites. Yamba's plotted over 6% Cr2O3 and 1% CaO. On top of that, statistically, finding a J-10 is astonishing when you consider the incredible volume of material involved. For example, if you were to crush and process 5 kilograms of actual kimberlite from a world class pipe like Finsch you would be fortunate to find 1 to 2 J-10's.
Twenty percent of our eclogitic garnets are plotting +0.07 Sodium which is indicative of deeply sourced economic kimberlite and our Chromites to quote Howard are “fantastic” with significant numbers plotting 62% Cr2O3.
To top things off, the indicators exhibit no erosion characteristics that would suggest that they have traveled any significant distances.
Interestingly, Howard also pointed out that not only did few of the six known pipes on the property exhibit the same or similar geophysical signatures, but they also did not all produce similar geochemical trains nor in some cases, any trains at all. In addition, as you know, some actually outcrop on land and none appear to be heavily eroded. This may account for the lack of some trains.
Not all the known pipes on the Yamba property have coincident geophysical magnetic low and electro-magnetic (EM) high signatures. The Ptarmigan, T-10 and S141 were mag only pipes and the Sue I believe was EM only. Of the more than 90 pipe like geophysical targets, SUF have prioritized 25. Of these, 6 have coincident mag and moderately strong EM geophysical signatures, 6 have coincident mag and weak EM geophysical signatures, and the remainder are either stand alone mag or stand alone EM signatures. Some have produced geochemical signatures down ice and some have not. 4 are coincident with small discrete lakes such as those under which DMM found their pipes.
Remember, not only is there evidence of limited erosion of some of these pipes, but the northern half of the property appears to be under a glacial fluvial wash or plain. In other words, other than lack of erosion, another reason few distinct geochemical trains appear to be evident over one half of the property is likely because they were either all mixed up at best, buried or literally washed away in a post glacial dam break. Because of the permafrost, all SUF has been able to do is sample frost boils in this area in the hope that more deeply buried and erupted indicators were relatively undisturbed and are therefore indicative of what is immediately up ice. But in this area, it would appear that using geophysical methods might be the only way to explore except where lakes may harbour pipes in which case sonic drills should provide some evidence.
Some of DMM's and most of ABZ's economic pipes appear to be structurally controlled by two northeast striking faults. Similarly, a number of Yamba's existing pipes similarly appear to line up on a north striking fault and the T-10 on another with a number of SUF's targets appearing to also line up on both.
Now a few readers might be saying, “ya, so what, HB and CJ thought they had pipes at Munn and look what we got, dikes”! “Why should I believe there aren't dikes at Yamba too”? Well, the fact of the matter is that while it is always statistically possible, the closest known kimberlite dikes are 40&50km to the southeast, south of Lac de Gras, and 120km to the northwest near Kikaviq Lake. Neither, DMM, ABZ or TAH have found dikes anywhere near the Yamba Lake claims.
As I have said for years, this is pipe country.
What does all this mean?
Simply, that TQY, DB and CAV never even began to discover the full potential of this property. There are still a considerable number of diamondiferous pipes to be found at Yamba, as many as 90 , which I suspect is statistically unlikely on the liberal side, and as few as 4, which I suspect is statistically too conservative.
However, keep in the back of your mind that DMM have over 150 pipes and still climbing on their land immediately along our southern border and their claim is roughly only six times larger.
While I have been convinced for more than four years, now two of the best exploration minds in the business, Howard and Chris, with a significant amount of evidence to support their opinion, think the goods can be found at Yamba too.
Remember, at the ore values of Kennady Lake, it only takes 3-4 pipes or rather 40,000,000 tonnes of ore to make a mine economic up here and TAH may want or need to run any of their nearby feed into any plant SUF may build.
SUF management is meeting next week to go over all of next years possible exploration choices and to apportion investment. Hopefully we will be hearing shortly what SUF plans are specifically.
Regards |
