Million-plus spending on MAN project

Seattle-based Nevada Star Resource Corp. in mid-August began a 2,000 meter (6,561-foot) reverse circulation drilling program on the northern portion of the MAN nickel, copper and PGE property in central Alaska.

It's the latest development in an active, million-dollar plus summer field season for the 271-square mile MAN property on the southern flank of the Alaska Range near the Richardson Highway community of Paxson.

Nevada Star is completing about $550,000 worth of exploration work on the northern part of the property this summer, to include prospecting the Canwell, Rainy, Eureka and Broxson prospects, according to President Robert Angrisano.

In addition, the company has optioned the southern part of the MAN property to Anglo American Exploration U.S.A., to include the Fish Lake and Dunite Hill prospects. Anglo plans to spend a total of $600,000 or more this summer, Angrisano said. "Next year's program commitment for Anglo is a contractual minimum of $1.2 million which will include a drilling program," he added.

Anglo prepares for winter drilling

Anglo began its preparatory work for this summer's field season in May, with the actual on-the-ground work beginning earlier in August, Angrisano said.

Anglo's work this summer and fall includes completing a 2,500 line kilometer (1,553 line mile) airborne Mag/EM survey, which is being flown with Anglo's proprietary Spectrem aircraft.

Geological mapping, prospecting, geochemical sampling and ground geophysics will also be completed during this summer's field season.

The new survey data will be combined with existing information from previous exploration programs to guide the ground program, with the goal of identifying drill targets for a winter drill program, Angrisano said.

"An exact date for the drilling program has not been set yet," he said.

Anglo's agreement with Nevada Star allows it to earn a 51 percent interest in the southern part of MAN by spending $12 million over a five-year earn-in period. Anglo can increase its interest by an additional 19 percent by completing a feasibility study and an additional 5 percent by arranging production financing for both companies, should the property be advanced to production.

Nevada Star drills Canwell

In an Aug. 23 news release, Nevada Star announced the start of drilling on the Canwell intrusion of the MAN property east of the Richardson Highway and north of Paxson.

"The drilling program is targeting several conductors identified from exploration work completed on the Canwell intrusion earlier this summer." the company said in its release.

While the release described a 2,000-meter drilling program, "the exact number of feet of drilling will depend on the mineralization identified during the drilling process," Angrisano told Mining News in mid August. "The purpose of the drilling program is to explore the discovered embayment area for mineralization."

Reprocessing data earlier this year identified a very large embayment area on the Canwell intrusion, which shows a large feeder to the west, connecting to the embayment, according to a company press release. Soil and rock samples show elevated levels of PGEs and nickel in the area, the company said, particularly along the north and south margins of the embayment feature.

Those areas "constitute high-priority drill targets where no previous drilling has occurred," the press release said.

Field work on the Canwell area began July 1, following several months work on data reprocessing of UTEM, VLF, Mag and airborne EM data into a 3-D-mag inversion model, Angrisano said.

"We are very excited by what we are seeing from the preliminary data, which verifies our assumptions about the magnitude of gold on the Specimen/Broxson area, and the location and mineralization of the embayment area on Canwell," Angrisano said.

Past work at MAN

Nevada Star focused attention in 2003 on the Canwell prospect, which included constructing a 3.7 mile access trail from the Richardson Highway and completing six backhoe trenches for a total length of 1,200 feet.

Significant metal concentrations ranged as high as 1.6 grams per tonne of platinum, 1.1 grams per tonne of palladium, 1.6 percent nickel and 0.5 percent copper in channel samples, the company previously reported. Grid soil samples were also collected at Canwell and at Rainy in 2003, identifying several large anomalous zones with elevated levels of platinum, palladium and gold.

Also in 2003, Nevada Star drilled three holes on the Fish Lake prospect, now held by Anglo. Those results indicate mineralization with grades of up to 5.7 percent nickel, 5.7 percent copper and 3.4 grams per ton of palladium.

Acquires underlying royalty

Earlier this summer, Nevada Star announced it acquired the underlying 2 percent net smelter royalty on the Canwell property from American Copper Nickel Company Ltd. Nevada Star agreed to issue 25,000 common shares for all of American Copper's remaining interest in Canwell.

The deal gives Nevada Star all of its MAN property claims free of any third party encumbrances, according to the July 28 release.