Friday, November 9, 2001 Back The Halifax Herald Limited
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Tide turning for mineral project
Steve Proctor / Truro Bureau
Bruce McMaster and Fred Carroll of Maritime Diamond drilling guide a core sampling pipe 10 metres into a sandbar off Maitland.
By Steve Proctor / Truro Bureau
Maitland - A four-wheeler loaded down with pipes, air hoses and boxes full of drilling gear scoots along a long narrow sandbar a kilometre from the Maitland shoreline.
Suddenly a front wheel hits a soft spot. Boxes and bodies fly into the air and the machine grinds to an unexpected halt. No one is hurt, and the four workers, dressed from head-to-toe in yellow slickers, reload the gear and haul the machine from the muck.
It takes just 15 minutes to get back on track, but the delay is long enough that it becomes impossible for the crew to drill another hole today.
The tide is coming in. Within hours the very spot where they are standing will be covered with close to 10 metres of water.
Tides are not a normal impediment to mineral exploration in Nova Scotia, but the search for titanium in the sands of the Shubenacadie River is not your typical project.
Titanium is a highly prized industrial mineral used in consumer and industrial products from paint to airplane fuselages and artificial hip joints.
It was discovered in the sands of the Shubenacadie River between Admiral Rock and Maitland several years ago, but it has only been in the last two years that a junior mining company from Toronto has tried to determine if the material could be mined commercially.
The word "mined" is a bit of a misnomer. If $3 million of exploration underway determines the concentrations could support a viable enterprise, the company has a plan to suck an estimate 200,000 tonnes of titanium from the riverbed sand.
The $130-million effort would require environmental approvals and intense government study, but as contemplated, tonnes of sand from the river bottom would be sucked onto two large barges.
The titanium would be extracted and concentrated using a magnetic or gravity fed processes and the cleaned sand would be returned to the riverbed.
Aboard a zodiac heading toward the drilling crew on the sandbar, Jason Ross, Titanium Corp. vice-president of exploration, tries to keep focused on the present. He says any commercial development is at least a couple of years away and is totally dependent on the work being done now.
Drilling programs in 1999 and 2000 showed the property had considerable promise but more exploration is needed.
Mr. Ross said drilling underway this fall is trying to confirm earlier findings and look at some previously untested area.
Wading from the zodiac to a sandbar drill site, Mr. Ross explains that everything possible has been done to keep the drilling operation simple. All equipment, including the four-wheeler, has to be carted by boat back to shore with each tide, so anything really heavy was out of the question.
Fred Carroll and Bruce McMaster of Maritime Diamond Drilling of Truro are the two workers controlling the drill today. Bruce Mitchell, a contract geologist from Stewiacke, tells them where to drill and takes numerous measurements as they sink metal tubes into the sand.
Seabirds nearby are neither curious nor disturbed as the gas-powered drill, that looks remarkably like a posthole digger, is fired up. The tip eats into the sand taking a hollow two-metre rod with it.
As the rod disappears into the sand, another tub is screwed to the top. A few minutes later, a third tube is added.
At least another two are connected before the drill bit hits more solid ground 12 metres deep and the engine is killed.
The crew is unperturbed by the rain and then the hail that pelts down from above.
To remove the now sand-filled tubes, Mr. Carroll and Mr. McMaster hook up a pneumatic extractor which grabs the pipe and pulls it up, a half-metre at a time.
As each of the two-metre sections is freed from the sand, they are removed and sealed at the ends with duct tape. They are labeled with both the site location and the depth.
In a small building in Hilden later in the afternoon, Mr. Mitchell carefully empties the tubes and examines the contents, carefully recording the location of the dark sandy stripes which indicate higher concentrations of titanium.
On a good day, the team can drill four holes a few kilometres apart before the tide forces them back to land.
On a day with soft spots, wild winds or mechanical troubles, they settle for two or three.
The Maritime Diamond drilling crew has put down 40 holes in the last three weeks.
Mr. Ross hopes, if the weather co-operates, they will be able to put down that many again before wrapping it up for the season.
The drill results will be studied over the coming months and used to fine-tune the next stage of the operation, which will be a laboratory-scale project.
The details remain confidential but will include experiments with extraction methods and production of a small amount of finished product that can be examined by potential customers.
Standing on a cliff face overlooking the river a rainbow appears as Mr. Ross chats about the potential for the project. Instead of taking it as an omen of good fortune, he scowls.
"I wish it were over a little further. If there's a pot of gold at the end, it appears it would be just outside our exploration lease . . . Maybe we need to look a little further still."
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Copyright © 2001 The Halifax Herald Limited |
