White Cliff Minerals (ASX: WCN) is ready to scratch into the surface at Canada’s Great Bear Lake after securing Federal Government approval for all of the licences at its Radium Point uranium-copper-gold-silver project.
With the final 2813 square kilometres of the company’s Radium Point ground now approved, it is understood to be the single-biggest holder of mineral exploration claims in Canada’s Northwest Territories.
Its total project tenure at the site encloses 2900 square kilometres of the Great Bear magmatic zone (GBMZ) that is known for its iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) and uranium potential. It describes the GBMZ as an extensively hydrothermally-altered and mineralised Proterozoic continental andesitic stratovolcano-plutonic complex, with the potential to host Canada’s most prospective IOCG and uranium mineralisation.
Management says it identified the Radium Point project, which is centred around Echo Bay, as being ripe for future discoveries. It is assessing the deposit by integrating an abundance of historic data with modern exploration techniques and recent academic publications on the deposit styles of the GBMZ.
Since being granted its initial licences in February, White Cliff has undertaken literature reviews, data compilation and digitising to identify prospective and possibly overlooked target areas on its ground.
At Radium Point, the company has lobbed into an area with a rich production history, which prior to 1982 amounted to 13.7 million pounds of uranium oxide, 34.2 million ounces of refined silver, more than 11.4 million pounds of copper (with gold credits), 104 tonnes of lead, 127 tonnes of nickel and 227 tonnes of cobalt.
Having these final Federal licences granted at Radium Point is the last phase of our application process and is a milestone where we now fully transform from applications under assessment to exploration-readiness at our multi-metal project in Canada. Significant preparatory works are now either complete or underway for the upcoming summer field season in Canada.
White Cliff Minerals managing director Troy Whittaker
Management says the initial focus of its next steps at its Radium Point and Nunavut projects in Canada will be rock chip sampling, reconnaissance and an airborne MobileMT (mobile magnetotelluric) geophysical survey, which it plans to follow up with a maiden drilling campaign.
Much closer to home, White Cliff says it has also wrapped up its current round of reverse-circulation (RC) drilling at the Pegasus prospect within its 100 per cent-owned Reedy South gold project near Cue in Western Australia.
The program targeted depth and strike extensions to its existing 2012 inferred mineral resource estimate of 42,000 ounces of gold and involved 11 holes for about 1500m of drilling. More than 1000 samples were collected and are undergoing analysis in Perth.
In further exploration, the company says it is also nearing the completion of a geochemical soil and bedrock sampling program on its largely underexplored WA ground at its Lake Tay gold-lithium and Diemals gold-copper-lithium projects.
Lake Tay sits next to TG Metals’ Lake Johnston lithium project that comprises 337sq km and more than 50km of strike of the Lake Johnston greenstone belt and the Charger Metals-Rio Tinto lithium exploration joint venture (JV).
The Diemals project, north of Southern Cross in WA’s Yilgarn region, contains two greenstone belts on the east and west margins of White Cliff’s tenement, which it sees as being prospective for gold, nickel, copper, lithium and rare earths.
The company has a few irons in the fire and it will be interesting to see which one will be the first to start glowing red.
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