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Gold/Mining/Energy : SUDBURY AREA AND THE PGM PLAY -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Just G who wrote (101)	1/1/2000 5:26:00 PM
From: Just G	Respond to of 349

I found an interesting article in the local "Mining North" publication. OPERATION TREASURE HUNT JUMPSTARTS MINING SECTOR SUDBURY Thanks to the Ontario Geological Survey and the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines, the vast haystack that prospectors must sift through to find a major mineral discovery has been whittled down to a more manageable size. Armed with $19 million in funding over two years. "Operation Treasure Hunt" is helping to jumpstart the struggling mining sector by providing information from extensive geophysical surveys to prospectors, company geologists and consultants looking for new sources of gold, nickel, silver, copper and other metals. Treasure Hunt is using airplanes and helicopters bristling with the latest technology to locate areas that promise extensive mineralization. Four helicopters and two airplanes are being deployed. The aircraft carry large cigar shaped objects called "birds," which generate electronic signals used to determine underlying geological structures. Information collected in the surveys will be made available in document, map, or digital form, for a nominal fee, to anyone engaged in the exploration process. Andy Fyon, senior manager with the Precambrian Geoscience Centre of the Ontario Geological Survey said the new program helps level the playing field for many mining outfits struggling to stay in the exploration game. He believes there will be a flurry of staking activity, and spending, once the information is made available to the public sometime next spring. "Whenever we've had a release of data (on promising mining locations), there's been a staking rush. That rush will (traditionally) last two or three days. We always seek a spike in exploration (activity). But, the really big money doesn't usually flow until three or four months after the information is released, once prospectors and mining officials get a chance to conduct their own tests. The new money has a positive ripple effect on Northern economies, since personnel brought in by mining firms to evaluate an area need groceries, lodging and hardware supplies. "They (workers) come in from across Canada," said Fyon. "We've looked around the world at typical examples' of this type of spending, said Fyon. Based on the results of studies in other major mining countries, that figures could easily rise to $100 or $200 per dollar invested if a mine is developed and brought to production, he said. "But that's the ideal scenario," cautioned Fyon. For the past several years, mining juniors have experienced increasing difficulties getting financing to back mineral exploration projects. That's especially the case when it costs millions to develop promising finds at a time when commodities prices continue to slump. "Treasure Hunt" should reduce the costs of exploration by identifying areas of the province that appear to have the right geophysical characteristics to encourage further investigation. Large swaths of Northern Ontario are covered by dense forests making ground exploration an extremely difficult, and costly, venture, said Fyon. "It (exploration) is a high risk game, we want to minimize the risk," said Fyon. Fyon added a major component of the survey includes investigating sediments at the bottom of northern lakes, as well as glacial deposits. A long, tubeshaped device, a couple of inches in diameter, is plunged from a helicopter into the lake's bottom or a glacial deposit, where it inserts itself into the sedimentary material. Then a sample is captured and hoisted up for a thorough testing.. A website with the information from the land and lake surveys will be set up by the spring. An e-mail address and a 1-888 number to access information will also be available at that time. The two year project was launched in March by Tim Hudak, the new Northern Development and Mines Minister, at the Toronto meeting of the Ontario Prospectors and Developers Annual Meeting.