The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Nabs claims adjoining Alaska Energy Metal's Nikolai property North of 60 Mining News – August 25, 2023
Resolution Minerals Ltd. Aug. 21 announced that it staked a 114-square-mile land package in an area of Alaska prospective for nickel with associated copper, cobalt, and platinum group metals.
Australia-based Resolution is best known in Alaska for its exploration of the 64North gold project near Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo mine. Over the past year, however, the company has also been acquiring and exploring projects that could offer future supplies of the metals needed for the clean energy transition.
Resolution's new Allegra nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM project is part of that expanded focus.
"The Allegra nickel project is an exciting addition to RML's portfolio of new energy metals projects," said Resolution Minerals Managing Director Chris McFadden.
This project includes one block of claims that wraps around the south and east sides of Alaska Energy Metals Corp.'s Nikolai project and a separate block across the Richardson Highway to the southeast.
Skolai Exploration LLC, an affiliate of KoBold Metals, is exploring another large nickel project immediately north of Alaska Energy Metals' Nikolai project. Backed by funding from Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and others, KoBold was formed specifically to leverage the power of AI and machine learning to accelerate the exploration of metals that are needed for the energy transition.
The area covered by Resolution's Allegra claims has been the target of some historical exploration that demonstrates nickel potential, but the property is much earlier-staged than Nikolai and the KoBold projects to the north.
The portion of the Allegra claims that wraps around the southeast side of Nikolai, however, may cover an extension of the Eureka trend being explored by Alaska Energy Metals. One hole drilled in this area of the Allegra project cut 4.7 meters of disseminated sulfides averaging 0.27% nickel.
Resolution says that it appears that most of the historical drilling at Allegra was carried out too far north to hit what is interpreted to be the mineralized trend.
In addition to bulk tonnage disseminated sulfides, Resolution says there is geophysical evidence of the potential for higher-grade massive sulfide nickel mineralization at Allegra.
A senior Resolution geologist recently completed a reconnaissance trip to collect preliminary surface samples from Allegra and visited the Alaska Geological Materials Center in Anchorage to examine historical drill core from the project area.
The information from this review will be used to plan future exploration of the nickel project.
"The demand for this important battery metal is forecast to continue to increase over the next decade and the recent activity in the region, including the current drilling programs by our neighbours and the rush to stake new ground, shows that RML has secured a good address in this emerging nickel district," said McFadden.
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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