The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - March 20, 2024
The 39,270 meters of drilling at Ferguson Lake since mid-2022 has resulted in a 172% increase in the indicated resources at this nickel-copper-cobalt-PGM project in Nunavut.
Canadian North Resources Inc. March 19 reported that drilling carried out since mid-2022 has resulted in an enormous increase in resources at its Ferguson Lake nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum group metals (PGM) project in Nunavut's Kivalliq region.
The 256.8-square-kilometer (99.2 square miles) Ferguson Lake project covers a roughly 15-kilometer- (nine miles) long mineralized trend. So far, 18 massive sulfide and two low-sulfide PGM domains have been identified along this trend.
Since the previous resource estimate was calculated in June 2022, Canadian North has completed 39,270 meters of drilling at Ferguson Lake. While representing only about 17% of the 226,167 total meters over the past two years, this campaign had an outsized impact on the amount of material elevated to the indicated mineral resource category.
According to the newest calculation, Ferguson Lake hosts 66.1 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.75% (1.09 billion pounds) copper, 0.47% (678.2 million lb) nickel, 0.05% (79.9 million lb) cobalt, 1.1 grams per metric ton (2.34 million ounces) palladium, and 0.19 g/t (419,000 oz) platinum.
This represents a 172% increase in the indicated resource, compared to the 2022 calculation. Some of this increased resource came from elevating inferred resources to the higher confidence indicated category.
Ferguson Lake now hosts 25.9 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.98% (557.8 million lb) copper, 0.58% (333.1 million lb) nickel, 0.07% (39.6 million lb) cobalt, 1.43 g/t (1.19 million oz) palladium, and 0.25 g/t (205,000 oz) platinum.
"This new mineral resource estimate has demonstrated the project is one of the largest and highest-grade undeveloped critical mineral projects in North America," said Canadian North Resources President and CEO Kaihui Yang. "In particular, Canadian North believes the large and high-grade open pit indicated mineral resource provides a solid base for the first development phase for building a potential producing mine."
Trevor Boyd, a technical advisor to Canadian North, underscored potential upgrades and expansions to the resources.
"This mineral resource estimate incorporates parts of the known 15-kilometer-long main mineralized belt, excluding the outside satellite mineralized zones; M-Zone, A51 Zone, West Zone South, and the South Discovery Zone," he said. "Although the project contains measurable rhodium, gold and silver values in multiple mineralized zones, these commodities are not included in the mineral resource modelling primarily due to the lack of systematic assay results."
Boyd also pointed to the considerable potential to add tonnage to the resources within the mineralized belt and its satellite deposits.
Canadian North will continue to explore this potential as it begins to evaluate the economics of developing and operating a mine based on the new resource.
"The company is moving forward with further exploration and expansion of mineral resources, follow-up metallurgical testing and commencing economic evaluation and infrastructure and environmental studies for a low-carbon footprint mine development plan at the Ferguson Lake Project," said Yang.
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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