Busy junior gears up for new season

Eagle Plains Resources Ltd. of Cranbrook, B.C., has both breadth and depth when it comes to mineral exploration in western Canada. The aggressive junior has acquired more than 36 properties in a dozen years, including 22 in British Columbia; nine in the Yukon Territory; two in Northwest Territories (one project is 5,500 square kilometers); and three in Saskatchewan.

Properties controlled by Eagle Plains offer exploration opportunities for gold, uranium, silver, copper, molybdenum, zinc, lead, rare earth minerals including gallium and industrial minerals, including sodalite.

The junior also boasts two inferred resources, a 48 million pounds molybdenum deposit at the Sphinx property in southeast British Columbia with an existing infrastructure of power and road and the Blende property with 35 million ounces silver, 1.2 billion pounds lead, and 1.3 billion pounds zinc in the central Yukon.

Publicly traded since July 1995, Eagle Plains is considered a project generator in the industry. Its management, comprised mainly of geologists with a combined 125 years of experience, acquired promising exploration properties for little more than the cost of staking during the industry downturns in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Eagle Plains began positioning itself to reap the benefits of current high metals prices and heightened industry interest in exploration.

Junior works with partners

The junior's primary strategy is to seek partners to help explore its properties. Doing so allows the company to reduce exploration risk, while maintaining significant interest in its properties in the event of discoveries. Eagle Plains calculates that its JV partners more than double its annual mineral exploration program.

Joint venture or option partners include NovaGold Resources Inc., Alexco Resource Corp., Blind Creek Resources Ltd., Golden Cariboo Resources Inc., Solomon Resources Ltd., Blue Sky Uranium Corp. and Wellstar Energy Corp.

Six projects are currently being advanced using the JV approach, which exposes Eagle Plains to more than $18.5 million in exploration spending in the next five years.

Successful projects spun off

A second step in Eagle Plains' strategy is to spin off successful exploration projects into new companies, once properties are advanced beyond the grassroots stage and a resource has been identified. The company does this in hopes of maximizing the projects' value to increase shareholder equity.

In June, Eagle Plains did this when it carved out the Copper Canyon, Abo and Severence properties to form Copper Canyon Resources Ltd., an independent corporate entity currently traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

The Copper Canyon property has an inferred resource of 164.8 million tonnes, grading 0.54 grams per ton gold, 7.15 grams per ton silver and 0.35 percent copper, containing 2.86 million ounces of gold, 37.9 million ounces of silver and 1.16 billion pounds of copper. It is part of the Galore Creek project being developed by NovaGold Resources. Galore Creek is one of the largest gold-silver-copper systems in North America.

Eagle Plains is also excited about its 2006 discovery of high-grade silver/copper/lead/zinc mineralization called "The Bronco," in the Mackenzie Mountain region near the Yukon/Northwest Territories border. The junior controls 5,500 square kilometers of prospecting permits in the area and will follow up with aggressive exploration this year.

In January, the junior announced the acquisition of a controlling interest in a diamond drilling company, Apex Diamond Drilling Ltd. The move is intended to give the junior the ability to choose when and where it will drill and eliminate the company's vulnerability to market demand for drill rigs and crews.

Eagle Plains also made plans recently to register its stock in the United States, which will make it more accessible to U.S. investors.