Houston Lake Mining Inc - HLM
Houston Lake options new rare metals discovery
Shares issued 10,471,600
1999-03-26 close $0.3
Monday Mar 29 1999
Mr. E. Grayme Anthony reports
The company has signed a 100-per-cent option agreement with an arm's length private individual on the 256-hectare (632-acre) Pakeagama Lake rare metals property. Houston Lake is required to issue 200,000 common shares, make cash payments totalling $150,000 and expend $63,000 over three years to earn a 100-per-cent interest in the Pakeagama Lake property. The option agreement is subject to a 2.5 per cent net smelter return and Alberta Stock Exchange approval.
The Pakeagama Lake property is approximately 150 kilometres north of Red Lake, Ont. The property covers the Pakeagama rare metals pegmatite, which is traceable at surface for 250 metres and is open along strike in both directions. The width of the pegmatite varies from 10 to 70 metres and appears to be widening along strike in both directions.
The economic potential of the area was first identified by Dr. Denver Stone of the Ontario Geological Survey in a regional reconnaissance mapping program in the early 1990s. However, the significance of the pegmatite in terms of size, classification type and its evolved mineralogy and chemistry was not realized until the 1998 fieldwork of Dr. Fred Breaks of the OGS. The fieldwork has now established that the Pakeagama rare metals pegmatite is potentially a world-class pegmatite, which is extremely fractionated and displays strong internal zonation, suggesting the presence of a Tanco/Bikita type system.
In Summary of Fieldwork 1998, OGS MP 169, released by the OGS in January 1999, it is stated that several economically important tantalum-rich minerals have been documented in 70 electron microprobe analyses undertaken to date at the Department of Earth Sciences at Open University (United Kingdom). The report also states that this pegmatitic system also contains pollucite, as several recessively-weathered crystals up to two centimetres by four centimetres were identified by the OGS and verified by X-ray diffraction. Pollucite is the main ore mineral for cesium, and its presence indicates a high exploration potential for zones rich in cesium. One of the conclusions reached in the report is that in the Pakeagama Lake pegmatite, the presence of tantalum-rich minerals such as manganotantalite, ferrotantalite, microlite and ferrotapiolite, coupled with pollucite and rubidium concentrations that exceed 1 per cent in potassium feldspar, indicate a high potential for zones rich in tantalum, cesium and rubidium-rich potassium feldspar. Significant lithium oxide values ranging from 3.77 per cent to 4.74 per cent have been returned from channel sampling of the spodumene-quartz core of the pegmatite.
Tantalum is used in electrical capacitors, tantalum-carbide tools, chemical alloys and for prosthetic devices and surgical implants in the medical industry. Cesium is used in calibrated drill muds, power generation, motors, opto-electronics and chemical catalyst DNA separation. Rubidium is used primarily by the ceramics industry. Lithium is used in ceramics, glassware, alloys, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, vitamins and in the smelting of aluminum ores.
Company president E. Grayme Anthony stated: "We are extremely pleased to have secured the rights to this new discovery. Although the work is at an early stage, it has been carried out by some of the foremost experts in the field and the results to date are quite spectacular. Houston Lake intends to advance the development of this property as quickly as is practical, as it certainly has the earmarks of being a company maker." A program of detailed mapping, surface stripping, trenching and sampling is proposed to complement Dr. Break's initial work on the Pakeagama rare metals pegmatite.
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