The Prospector - Exploration and Investment News
SPOTLIGHT ON...Houston Lake Mining
When the Going Gets Tough... by Samantha D. Amara (The Prospector Newspaper)
The good news about bear markets in the mining industry is that it draws attention to those few companies that really offer a superb investment opportunity amid some dismal circumstances. These ?diamonds in the rough' have quite a few hurdles to beat, but initiative and ingenuity often prove to be the helping hands that push their stocks to the top; after all when the going gets tough, the tough re-prioritize and dig a little harder.
Houston Lake Mining (HLM: ASE) may well be one of the industry's golden phoenixes, or should I say rare metal phoenix? The ASE junior has been making quiet but significant wares in north western Ontario, while many in the industry have been experiencing setbacks as they watch prices fall like, well, like a bag of gold bricks.
Back in February, Houston prepared to get to work on its optioned Tib lake property, in search of results to back up hole TB-95-09, which was drilled in 1995 and intersected 13.6 m grading 1.68 g/t combined Pt+Pd=Au, known as the Platinum Group Metals or PGMs. The intersection also included 5.2 m of 2.74 g/t combined PGM and a 1.5 m section grading 4.53 g/t combined PGMs. The company collared confirmation hole TB-99-14 within 5.0 m of the 1995 discovery and found a similar geography and a coincident sulphidized zone, but received only anomalous PGMs values of 0.311 g/t over 10.6 m. The company was determined to plug on though, with checks, mapping and surveys along with trenching and stripping where a 1.2 g/t PGMs sample was found. President, CEO and qualified geologist Grayme Anthony, said that the project "has the right geology and a similar age to Canada's only (primary-referring to North American Palladium's Iles des Lac mine) palladium producer."
Meanwhile, Houston further distanced itself from the weaker priced metals by optioning the Pakeagama Lake rare metals/pegmatite property, about 150 km north of Red Lake, Ontario. For the relatively small price of $150,000 plus 200,000 shares and $63,000 worth of exploration over three years, Houston picked up the property that was first noticed by the Ontario Geological Survey in the early 1990s. The already good looking frog turned into an even better looking prince when 1998 summer field work by the Ontario Geological Survey established a potential world class pegmatite deposit, the second largest in Ontario, hosting tantalum rich minerals, indicator minerals for cesium and rubidium and significant lithium values.
Houston continued to expand its horizons and open more doors for itself by optioning yet another property the following month. The Favourable lake rare metals property, which is located just 50 km north of Pakeagama Lake was a bargain as well for 200,000 shares and exploration in the area of about $70,000 over three years. Again, the company was lead to the property by "favourable features for concentrations of rare metals", identified by the Ontario Geological Survey through mapping in 1990. The property adds to the company's potential coffers with more indicators of lithium, tantalum, cesium and rubidium.
Buying up properties is one thing, but getting good results from them is another. The company admits that it does not yet have enough funds to begin work on the project so the anticipated results will have to wait a bit. In April, however, less than a month after optioning the property, Mr. Anthony reported that the company had raised about $236,000 of an immediate target of $300,000. He said the company hoped to raise an additional $500,000 ($200,000 for surface work and $300,000 for drilling) within a year. Even without results from work actually performed by Houston though, Mr. Anthony is more than just confident in the property. He says that the tantalum market has grown at about 10% per year since 1992, mostly due to its use in the computer industry. On return from a field trip, Mr. Anthony told me that the project could be a company builder. "(We) are truly excited about the project. Pakeagama is our immediate focus... (there are) early indications that there could be something significant there."
In the meantime, the company and its investors can find more comfort in the concrete palladium results that have since come out of the checking at Tib Lake. Check assays of the 1995 hole performed by Chemex Labs in Ontario returned 1.60 g/t combined PGMs over 13.06 m containing 2.76 g/t combined PGMs over 5.28 m and including 4.35 g/t combined PGMs over 1.51 m, at a depth of about 30.0 m. the difference between values in the 1995 hole and the one Houston drilled earlier this year were apparently due to a noticeable change in sulphide droplet size and content. The confirmation was all the company needed.
Houston says future work will target the Kuhner Occurrence, which is the site of the check confirmation results, and the Road Occurrence, which contains net textured, cumulate sulphide mineralization that returned 1.2 g/t combined PGMs from a grab sample taken by an Ontario government geologist.
It takes a strong company, with even stronger resources to pull through the hard tikmes and come up with something viable. Houston's shares are currently trading at $0.28/share, which is a long climb from its pre-$0.20 days of early July and very near its 52-week high of $0.34/share. But with the rare metal potential of its compact and well-matched portfolio and anticipated work at Tib Lake and Pakeagama, Houston may have what it takes to come out showing that its more than tough enough to make it. |
