ROHTERT AND RUBIES
Given the number of investors that TGX has, and how busy their staff are working with their summer field results, I feel somewhat privileged to have been able to spend a long time on the phone with Mr. Rohtert getting details on work that would likely never be available elsewhere. Since the bigger story is really quite amazing, I will share what I have learned with other investors so we can all get our knowledge up. Before starting I will put in a word of caution. Mr. Rohtert is very excited about the work over the last year, which he said has been the most successful and rewarding he has had in 32 years of doing this kind of mineral exploration work. He feels great about the accomplishments, which included 60 consecutive dates of productive work in Greenland by boat and helicopter, in spite of fog and other weather. When you can easily spend entire summers as a geologist finding absolutely nothing of interest, it is understandable if one becomes extremely enthusiastic when they are able to make very significant discoveries and progress. When William compares the quality of Big Red ruby to Mogok Burma, the best ruby on this planet, that is really quite a statement, and I really, really hope that he is right, although we will need to wait for cut gems and valuations to judge if this is his extreme enthusiasm speaking or if he is bang on correct. For my part, I am a major investor and believe strongly in the prospects of the company, so I have biases too, although I will try to give as balanced and objective a picture as possible. I did try to find out the dirt, but the truth is that Greenland apparently has no dirt (only overburden :-)).
I tried to go through a long list of questions one by one with Mr. Rohtert, although when he got going, before long I was finding that he had answered or half-answered most of everything I wanted to discuss. Anyone has to be impressed not just by his great experience and knowledge with the many aspects of gemstones and their exploration, but also how he can talk. Anyway, here goes with my story, which is coming straight from Rohtert, from which I made notes and have done my best to convey accurately.
Apparently TGX has ALL of the prospective ruby ground in Fiskenaesset staked, 110 square kilometers worth, within which there are approximately 20 square kilometers where the rubies are concentrated. This is roughly comparable in size to the ruby district of Burma, but the differences could hardly be more extreme. Within the general vicinity of the rubies in Burma in steamy jungle there has been a dense population of upwards of a half million people in the area for over 500 years, digging anywhere and everywhere looking for gems. In contrast, Fiskenaesset is barren, isolated, and unpopulated. With Big Red, for example, Rohtert did not find a single sign that a human being had ever been at the location in the history of this planet. That is how such an incredible discovery can be made; in other parts of the world, such showings might have been found hundreds or thousands of years ago and this low hanging fruit accumulated into the collections of kings and moguls. How good is the quality of Big Red? Rohtert says that he has traveled to Burma and it is comparable to the Mogok quality rubies found there. The deposit, by the way, is hydrothermal in nature, which is quite a difference from metamorphic deposits such as Siggartartulik in allowing the ruby crystals to form well. At Big Red, there are many, many one gram stones that can be cut into one carat gems. Furthermore, Rohtert says that the company thinks they know why geologically Big Red is there, and thinks there are more of these rubies elsewhere. Apparently the company has discovered the equivalent of G10 diamond indicators for these rubies, and with systematic work, in the other places where they have already found these indicators they think they will be successful in finding what rubies are there.
Rohtert went on about how amazed he was at how extensive the ruby mineralization is. Last year Siggartartulik was reported on with 120m of mineralized strike length sampled. Rohtert followed this deposit along strike, and before long he was finding a boxcar sized showing of ruby on the ground, then another and another…and this continued for a total of 1.8 kilometers. Furthermore, in the areas where the ruby is not visible, Rohtert believes that the ground has eroded recessively, which is to say, the host rock has sometimes been softer than the rubies and eroded into soft overburden, leaving rubies intact hidden under moss and other cover. He dug up 100 kg of this material in one case and from this recovered 100 g of ruby. Based on this, he thinks TGX should bring in a 2.5 tonne per hour wash plant and systematically go through all this type of overburden, finding where the rubies are in the area along what is something like 200 km of anorthosite intrusion. Conveniently, the village of Fiskenaesset has one struggling fish processing plant that he thinks might be acquired to house the wash plant.
There are now nine ruby deposits at Fiskenaesset and Rohert wants to concentrate on three which he has told management he believes are economic. The big three are Siggartartulik since it is the biggest, The Tooth, which apparently has better quality rubies than Siggartartulik although not as good as Big Red, and of course Big Red itself, which has the best quality rubies, and in addition to mining the ground, the company might end up dredging a lake it is beside to recover rubies from. In addition, there are two other sites he considers worth drilling, including the Bay Watch discovery, which like Siggartartulik has a very long strike length. In other deposits, such as Upper Annertusoq, most of the gems are pink sapphires, which is the reason for not putting any priority on them, not that pink sapphires are not valuable, however I think that Rohtert may be concerned that the demand for them could be variable and not as solid as for true ruby.
truenorthgems.com
I got into asking about the distribution of rubies at Siggartartulik, a question I have had for a long time, not completely certain that my personal enthusiasm for the deposit is well-founded. The distribution is an important question, since the size of the mineralized area appears to be so large – was the sample taken representative of the mineralized width and strike length, or just isolated sections of the best grade? Rohtert said that in general the ruby distribution is uniform, and along strike, the distribution is remarkably uniform. Directly at the contact between the anorthosite and amphibolite, the rubies are more concentrated, however unequivocally and emphatically he has said that the sample he took was representative of the mineralized width and the entire mineralized area.
By the way, Richard Herd of the Geological Survey of Canada (who I think that Rohtert would prefer to simply call “dick”) was in fact at the TGX ruby site for two weeks eating their food, and wandering off getting into trouble and needing rescuing. Rohtert was not very appreciative of the fact that “dick” got his news story written without making a single mention of True North Gems, and acting like the Greenland rubies were his exclusive personal discovery.
How would rubies be mined at Fiskenaesset? First of all, one must understand that the land is very rough – steep fjords and sheer rock over an undulating landscape. There is a solution to accessing and mining in such terrain that Greenland has become accustomed to, which is cheaper than building roads. Three current Greenland mines use this system. The mines are actually built with systems of conveyor belts as is commonplace in the coal industry, and gondola-type equipment which are sold and serviced as part of the local Greenland industry. Gondolas carry partly processed material down to factories towed in and floating on barges, and in the end of mine life the area can be reclaimed to near its original state very easily. TGX would have a cluster of ruby mining sites. At these sites, wire rock cutters would quarry out cubes of rock about ½ meter in each dimension. These would be iteratively crushed to 4 inches, then 2 inches, then 1 inch in order not to destroy the larger stones, and apparently TGX’s ruby and sapphire host rock is very cooperative in allowing the gems to be removed in this manner. The crushed rock would be sent by conveyor and gondola to a wash plant and be tumbled, washed, and optically sorted into different grades of ruby. This would all require only a small labour force, a good thing considering that the population of the area is very small.
The great thing about Greenland is that the people actually like people to mine there. Rohtert pointed out that all economic activity is said to derive from manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Greenland has no agriculture of any kind and is too small and remote to generate a manufacturing industry, so they truly appreciate the mining industry, which has become part of their culture. There is just one government agency that handles all mining concerns and issues, straightforwardly and efficiently. This of course is in great contrast to mining in Nunavut. I think that Rohtert almost ran out of superlatives (and expletives) in describing what is a colossal mess of dysfunctional and petty bureaucracy, thanks to the nanny state in Ottawa. Apparently there are four parallel levels of government that one needs to go through to get approvals. These groups do not communicate, cooperate, or agree with each other. Rohtert suspected some of the individuals involved had personal agendas based on assumptions that all mining is bad and in need of being blocked in petty ways, with no regard to the big picture (and by the way, the locals at Kimmirut are strongly in favour of development of the sapphires). He thinks organized protest on the part of mining companies in the area is in order to attack the complete disgrace of a system that is in place.
So, on to the sapphires. I’m sure that everyone has read Bob Moriarty’s excellent piece, which described how TGX was held up in their work efforts, 100% owing to the fault of Canadian government bureaucratic negligence and malice. Apparently TGX was not even able to get a permit to build the small road on an existing ATV track needed to safely transport workers back to Kimmirut in the event of an accident. Rohtert was not going to by stymied by this frozen banana republic and eventually resorted to building the road “by hand”, for which there was no legal basis for blockage by the authorities. Having done this, they were apparently able to move on to other work for which there will be press releases. In terms of exploration, the group was very excited about the innovation of using giant fluorescent lamps at night, by which means they were able to explore along 1 square km of terrain per night given that there is a fluorescing mineral that occurs in combination with the sapphire.
I asked Mr. Rohtert about what TGX has done with heat treatment. In fact, it turns out that one of the main reasons that the company acquired the ruby properties was that the previous explorers there had not done heat treatment on their gems. TGX got samples and did experiments and found that in fact heat treatment works well in improving the colour and removing blue/purple that would reduce the value and appearance of the gems (and of course colour is the key factor for coloured gemstones). TGX has sent more ruby parcels to four commercial labs and has gotten back results from two which are said to be positive and encouraging. Results from heat enhancement for the sapphires were apparently VERY good – I’m sure that people can see pictures on the website at some point to judge the appearance of the heat-treated gems for themselves.
What are the plans for next year? In February, Rohtert wants to go back to Greenland to try to get a wash plant set up. Drilling needs to be done on the three main deposits, and Rohtert wants to talk to the mines department about exporting ruby concentrate. As for Beluga, lots more permitting, drilling and bulk sampling in addition to exploration.
I don’t know how long before we will be seeing gemstones from all the bulk samples, talus, etc, but Brad Wilson of Alpine Gems is already working on cutting specials and four of five sets of bulk sample have arrived at Lakefield Ontario to extract the gemstones from the samples.
Thanks go out to Mr. Rohtert for sharing his thoughts, and I for one share his enthusiasm! There are apparently news releases to go out that will provide a lot of information on the sapphires beyond what I have relayed. And, of course we cannot forget the emeralds, which I hope got get information on and report on in the new future as well. |
