Hi Ali,
I hope the lab with which Murdo has contracted to do the assays for the PGMs is a good one. A couple or three years ago I was an avid reader of a thread started by a fellow by the name of Mike Wendell (I think that was his name). Basically, Mike described the difficulty in getting reliable assays for certain "cluster" formations in PGMs. There are apparently a number of different ways to perform assays (different solvents I would imagine) and some do not detect certain PGM occurrences, so samples would come back with no noted PGM values, where a fire assay, for example, would yield the true concentrations.
The fact that the re-submitted 1986 core sample (with the previously unidentified 34oz mineral) came back from what I expect would be the same lab he is using now with a determination of Pd is very encouraging. Perhaps the occurrences in the Sudbury area are of the more easily assayable variety.
I am curious as to why Murdo waited 13 years to determine what the mysterious mineral was. I don't have data on what Pd was trading at in 1986, but I do recall that it was trading at about US $85 in the mid-90s. Perhaps Murdo suspected it was Pd back then, but it was not worth the expense to have it assayed.
I agree, Flag has some excellent prospects other than the current Pd discovery. The Wolf lake values, at shallow depths, are a no-brainer. Maybe better capitalization one day will enable a more systematic exploration of the McNish gravitational anomalies. They are probably iron, but you never know. |
