The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Will apply dataset to refining drill targets at Alaska project North of 60 Mining News - August 16, 2023
An outcrop of the ultramafic nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum group element mineralization at the Nikolai project in Alaska.
Nickolai is located near the paved Richardson Highway, about a 2.5-hour drive southeast of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Alaska Energy Metals Corp. Aug. 16 announced that it has acquired a database from more than $30 million of exploration carried out since 1995 at the company's Nikolai nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum group metal project in Alaska.
INCO Ltd. first discovered and explored Nickolai during the 1990s. Nevada Star Resources Ltd. picked up the property, which was known at the time as MAN, and carried out exploration with Anglo American (Canada) Ltd. from 2004 to 2006. As its exploration evolved, Nevada Star changed its name to Pure Nickel Inc. and partnered with Japan-based Itochu Corp., which funded exploration at the project from 2008 until 2013.
Most of the historical work at Nikolai focused on Eureka, a roughly 10-mile- (15 kilometers) long trend of nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM mineralization. The property, however, also includes the Canwell block, which has shown the potential for higher-grade deposits. Exceptionally high grades of nickel, copper, gold, platinum, and palladium, along with the rarer platinum-related metals osmium, iridium, ruthenium, and rhodium, have historically been reported from outcrop grab, float, and chip samples from Canwell.
Alaska Energy Metals has purchased the complete Nikolai exploration dataset from Alaska Critical Metals, a private company that purchased it from Pure Nickel, for C$1.05 million and 2 million Alaska Energy shares valued at another C$1 million.
"A strong return on investment will be realized almost immediately from this data purchase. Thousands of metres of drilling are represented, including holes in the Eureka Zone exploration target area," said Alaska Energy Metals President and CEO Gregory Beischer. "This additional information will significantly accelerate our work."
The dataset includes drill log and assay data from all holes historically drilled at Nikolai; data from eight types of airborne and ground geophysical surveys carried out over the property; lidar survey; and thousands of soil and rock samples.
Alaska Energy Metals plans to begin using the purchased information immediately to refine drill targeting.
"The geophysical surveys will be invaluable for guiding our drill programs toward higher-grade zones of mineralization," said Beischer. "This move to purchase the data will provide an immediate benefit to our exploration program and to our shareholders."
The company calculates that it would cost upwards of $40 million to carry out the exploration needed to create the dataset, which is well-preserved and organized.
"The cost we have paid to purchase the data is roughly 5% of the cost to replicate the data," said Beischer. "This is a great step forward!"
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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