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Hier für alle zum Nachlesen!!! Knight to ride high on Cape Smith nickel TSX Venture and Frankfurt Stock Exchange listed resource company Knight Resources forms part of a Canadian junior trilogy where expertise in corporate management, business and exploration have combined to create an exceptionally well integrated management team. By Charles Amery Three of the individual company’s major players – president Harvey Keats, chief executive David Patterson and the recently appointed vice-president of exploration Robin Adair – form part of the impressive overall structuring of three Canadian resource companies, independent yet in many ways interdependent. Knight Resources and Donner Metals with their Quebec interests, and Coastport Capital through exploration in Ecuador, not only combine people skills but also crossinvesting shareholders. Donner has 18% of Knight Resources and, significantly, Anglo American also has close to 10% of Knight Resources. Since early in 2003 Knight entered into an agreement with Anglo American Exploration (Canada) to earn a 49% interest in their 720 square kilometre West Raglan project in northern Quebec. More precisely, the Cape Smith Belt, which has recently emerged as one of the most prospective areas in the world to discover new high-grade nickel sulfide deposits. Xstrata acquired Falconbridge Limited in November 2006 – and now Xstrata Nickel controls the Raglan nickel mine with reported resources, reserves and ore mined to date totalling about 32 million tonnes of approximately 2.8% nickel and 0.8% copper, significant platinum group elements and cobalt. The mine which has been in production since 1998 producing about a million tonnes a year with a mine life of more than 20 years and includes openpit and underground mines, is well known for high nickel tenors and has nine deposits consisting of numerous lenses that occur over a 55km strike length. The known nickel deposits in the Cape Smith Belt occur in two different settings: the Raglan Formation and the Delta Horizon. All Xstrata Nickel’s reserves and resources occur in the Raglan Formation where recent exploration success at Zone 5-8 was reported by Falconbridge in 2004 as follows: “Reserves (proven and probable) at Zone 5-8 totalled 747,700 tonnes grading 3.01% nickel, 0.81% copper, 0.06% cobalt, 0.87gpt platinum and 2.51gpt palladium and resources included 707,000 tonnes grading 2.60% nickel and 0.55% copper of indicated resources and 2,182,000 tonnes grading 3.30% nickel and 0.80% copper of inferred resources.” In 2002, aerial surveys over the Anglo/Knight property confirmed the existence of a 65km strike length of the Raglan Formation and a 65km strike length of the Delta Horizon on the West Raglan project. Adair has just come over from working with Falconbridge for 25 years and worked as exploration manager of nickel (North America) for the past five years. His comment: “Geologically, it’s a Raglan look-alike.” The producing Raglan mine is just 90km east of the eastern margin of Knight’s West Raglan project, the company’s only resource venture which since the 2003 agreement with Anglo American has seen electromagnetic surveys, surface sampling, diamond drilling and extended prospecting. The results of the 2005 diamond drill program, which identified new Raglan-type mineralisation, refocused attention on the Greater Frontier area from which the majority of significant assay results had been coming. This formed the basis for the successful 2006 program where a minimum of 3000m of diamond drilling was planned with a $C3 million exploration budget. “The property we have is in one of the world’s most prospective nickel areas and a western extension of the Raglan Nickel Belt. At West Raglan last year, we contemplated doing a $C3 million Phase 1 and $C2 million Phase 2 operation,” Keats told RESOURCESTOCKS. “We brought an extra rig to the property and ended up doing as much drilling in Phase 1 as we had planned for both phases and within the initial $C3 million Phase 1 budget, so we never really implemented Phase 2. “This year we anticipate drilling about 8000m for $C4.5 million, 51 percent of which is Anglo American funded. This is now a separate program for 2007.” Last year Knight successfully raised $C600,000 through a non-brokered private placement. A total of 4303m of diamond drilling – which included 20 new holes – was carried out in 2006 and, according to Keats, resulted in a breakthrough in the three-dimensional understanding of what is a complex geological picture in the Frontier area. He said discrete mineralised lenses in restricted troughs at the base of steeply dipping ultramafic units have been outlined near the surface in the Frontier area. The Frontier area extends over 3km eastwest and 1km north-south and has been divided into four zones – Frontier South, Frontier Central, the Century Zone and BT Zone – with the mineralisation occurring in ultramafic rocks of the Raglan Formation. Last year the main area of activity was at the Frontier-Century Zone where 14 holes for 2816m were drilled and a trough was outlined at the base of a steeply north dipping and north facing upper ultramafic unit with two holes at its centre showing attractive grades and thicknesses. Two exploration holes were drilled at Frontier South, one in the BT zone, and four at Frontier Central. “The objective of this year’s program will be to discover new lenses down dip and along strike at the base of numerous mapped and interpreted ultramafic units throughout the Frontier area. Down-hole pulse EM surveys will be an essential tool in this endeavour,” Keats said. “Through the 2006 program we had quite a few good intersections. The geology is complex as is the geometry but we think we made a breakthrough last year in understanding the geology that will lead to greater success this year. “Of course there are no guarantees with Mother Nature, but we plan on concentrating in the areas of known mineralised zones this year and hopefully that will translate into a larger success rate. “Most of the nickel sulfides we have drilled have been very close to surface and we are now going to look at other mineralised zones down dip.” Deep penetrating moving loop electromagnetic surveys have also been carried out over the Greater Frontier area aimed at outlining known mineralised zones near surface and extending targets for additional mineralised zones to depths of 200-300m. One objective has been to discover multiple sulfides along strike and down dip of known mineralisation in a similar setting to known sulfide lenses on Xstrata Nickel’s Raglan property to the east. Exploration vice-president Robin Adair joined the company at the end of last year. “The geological setting and the style of known mineralisation in the Frontier area are identical to that at Raglan and our exploration approach is designed with this in mind,” Adair said. “The same geological horizon can be traced back to Raglan with the Frontier area being about 135km from Xstrata Nickel’s mine/mill operation. Our property position covers 65km of key stratigraphy containing numerous occurrences of ultramafic rocks that can potentially host nickel mineralisation.” Reported surface mineralisation at Raglan occurs over a strike length of about 60km. “The premise of the whole West Raglan project is that it has similar potential to Xstrata’s Raglan deposits.” Company chief executive David Patterson emphasised the priority of the Frontier area when it came to spending the exploration dollars. “Frontier is the area within West Raglan where all the drilling was done last year and we will be in that area again in 2007 because this is where all our economic intersections have been to date,” Patterson said. “It is where we are concentrating. We have not written off the rest of the property; it is just that Knight Resources and Anglo American both decided we should continue in the area of previous success. “We had a pretty reasonable first half [financial year 2006-07] and nickel has been found elsewhere but the best concentration is Frontier. We believe there is no smoke without fire.” |
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| aus der Diskussion: | Knight Metals ehem. Knight Resources - Gute Bohrergebnisse |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | Viper3x (31.03.07 15:58:07) |
| Beitrag: | 3,581 von 12,282 (ID:28600591) |
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