Ontario’s Sudbury Basin is one of the world’s most prolific mining regions, having produced over $500 billion worth of nickel and copper. Some of the largest mining companies globally, such as Vale, Glencore and KGHM, have significant land holdings and are currently operating in the region, trying to meet the growing global demand for these metals.
Canadian junior SPC Nickel Corp (TSX-V:SPC, OTC:SPCNF) is also actively exploring and drilling in the area, and its CEO Grant Mourre is encouraged by recent drill results from the company’s West Graham project, which included 2.48% nickel and 0.64% copper over 7.8 metres (m) from its Phase 1 drilling campaign.
“We released results for two different holes and one of the holes, number 20, returned grades and thicknesses that are comparable or better than the grades of the adjacent West Graham resource that was put out in 2009,” Mourre told Proactive recently.
“Then we drilled another hole, hole number 26, where we intersected an unexpected zone of semi massive to massive sulfide over just about eight meters, that returned what we considered to be fantastic values of about 2.5% nickel and 0.65% copper, but really high grade samples with some of the massive sulfides being up to 6%,” he added.
Mourre noted hole 26 was drilled in between the historic wide-space drilling that was done on the property in the late 1950s, which suggests there might be other previously untested, massive sulfide zones on the property that weren’t adequately tested with the wide-space drilling.
SPC Nickel’s West Graham project is comprised of the company’s recently-consolidated West Graham and Crean Hill 3 properties. West Graham is thought to contain more than 100 million pounds of nickel and 75 million pounds of copper, based on a non-NI-43-101 compliant historic Inferred resource estimate. The resource grades, averaging 0.45% nickel and 0.31% copper, increase towards its Crean Hill 3 property.
Meanwhile Crean Hill 3, which SPC Nickel is advancing under a cooperation agreement it signed with Vale Canada in January of this year, is thought to host two-thirds of the mineralization of both properties, has also had an historic mineral estimate done, which showed 16.78 million tonnes averaging 0.43% nickel and 0.3% copper, and is also adjacent to past-producing mines.
The company stated there is potential for higher-grade mineralization at Crean Hill 3 as the property was previously drilled between 100m to 150m spacings and there is also mineralization outcrops at surface.
By combining the two properties, SPC Nickel believes the opportunity exists to evaluate and develop a large open pit resource of more than 20 million tonnes.
Mourre said the next steps in the development of these properties is continuing to drill for most of this year, with the first objective being to obtain an updated resource estimate of the combined West Graham and Crean Hill 3 properties.
The company is currently doing some of the infill drilling at West Graham to increase the confidence of the 2009 resource estimate. Then, following an updated resource estimate will be the various studies to move towards a decision on whether or not there's a resource there that could go into production.
“During the next 12 to 24 months our shareholders can expect a lot of drill results from our current program plus an updated resource,” Mourre stated.
“After that would be a PEA (Preliminary Economic Assessment) study, all of which could be a catalyst for SPC Nickel’s stock price going forward.”
Contact Sean at sean@proactiveinvestors.com