Re: Nickel Mines : Grades and Depths - Mucker ? (by-products)
in response to
by
posted on
Aug 22, 2009 12:53PM
NI 43-101 Update (September 2012): 11.1 Mt @ 1.68% Ni, 0.87% Cu, 0.89 gpt Pt and 3.09 gpt Pd and 0.18 gpt Au (Proven & Probable Reserves) / 8.9 Mt @ 1.10% Ni, 1.14% Cu, 1.16 gpt Pt and 3.49 gpt Pd and 0.30 gpt Au (Inferred Resource)
And on another note I would like to point out that with the upcoming infrastructure plus Chromite and Vanadium, we are in a totally different ballgame now.
Eagle 1A is open-pit (beginning 7 metres below surface), 1B and 1C will be mined underground and have favourable grades and we shouldn´t forget the BY-PRODUCTS:
Noronts presentation on page 18 shows that Eagle 1A with an average of 1.22% Cu has the highest grades of copper in the komatiite deposit comparison (most of the deposits averaging BELOW 0.40% Cu) !
And Richard´s statement from 2007 regarding PGE content of Eagle 1:
"we had enough PGE's to generate a mine just for this"
was certainly NOT overly optimistic and "promotional" as many pointed out around proxy-battle time.
My DD summary on PGE deposits shows clearly that Eagle 1A and the other "nest participants" (already known or soon to be found at deeper levels) supports Richard´s statement of a stand-alone PGE mine named Eagle 1 (A) !
For reference see my previous post on that subject which I will repost here:
http://agoracom.com/ir/Noront/forums/discussion/topics/355449-stand-alone-pge-mine-already-with-e1-level-1a-now-confirmed/messages/1191972#message
Back in November 2007 and again in February 2008 I did an analysis on PGE mines, after Richard Nemis´ comment :
"we had enough PGE's to generate a mine just for this"
As you can see from my two postings
Nov 2007: http://agoracom.com/ir/Noront/forums/discussion/topics/168363-put-eagle-1-so-far-on-the-world-league-chart/messages/633237#message
Feb 2008: http://agoracom.com/ir/Noront/forums/discussion/topics/199573-just-spoke-to-richard/messages/736375#message
I came to the conclusion (bare in mind that the NI 43-101 for Eagle 1 was not available at that point) that Noront with an open-pit deposit like Eagle 1 (beginning 7 metres below surface!) would compare very favourably to "world-class" PGE mines (if the grades would continue throughout the deposit), especially compared to South African underground (up to 3000 metres) PGE mines.
The best PGE mines are operating at up to 24g/t 3E-PGE (meaning combination of platinum, palladium and gold), with a lot of them (especially at Bushveld SA @ 3000m) economically mining between 3-6 g/t 3E-PGE !
Noront´s Eagle 1 (Level 1A) came up with (NI 43-101) 5,18 g/t 3E-PGE (indicated) and 6,0 g/t 3E-PGE (inferred).
And now Level 1B returns 2,9 g/t PGE (Au missing?) and Level 1C returns 6,1 g/t PGE (without Au again).
If this is not a confirmation of a substantial (stand-alone) PGE deposit, then I don´t know what would !
FANTOMAS
P.S.: BTW, we found some Nickel and Copper as well. Might be mined along with the PGE´s ! LOL
P.P.S. And where is the Rhodium ? Was the whole PGE suite analysed ?