Someone doing oil exploration, and interested in LBSR, sent Jim Briscoe a link to the website of Ground Metrics:

http://www.groundmetrics.com (see the excellent video),

 asking if their technology to collect and analyze data on electrical resistivity might have application in mineral exploration. Jim responded with this informal comment.

This is in no way to be taken as a news release from LBSR. I’m posting it, with Jim's permission, only because I think readers of this board might be interested.

From Jim Briscoe:

I am not a geophysicist but a mining exploration geologist.  Thus I can't bridge the gap between oil field usage and use for mineral deposits - in part because I don't clearly understand what’s causing the resistivity contrast in the oil environment.  However, it has become apparent in recent years that hydrogen sulfide emanating from oil and gas moving toward the surface from such sources are reacting with iron in rocks and soil and creating the mineral iron pyrite which is always associated with mineral deposits and always with the variety called porphyry copper deposits which tend to be large + 1 square mile to very large in the tens of square miles.  Hay Mountain where we are working has a magnetic anomaly (iron) which is at least 35 square miles, caused by an inferred intrusive granodiorite which is in part pyritic we believe and a probable resistivity low along with surrounding alteration minerals caused by the mineral body which also form resistivity lows.

Resistivity has been used as a search tool for mineral deposits perhaps dating back to Alexander Graham Bell who used magnetics in the search for iron and nickel.

We have a very detailed survey for magnetics and natural source electromagnetics at various frequencies from 30 MHz to 930 mhz.  These different frequencies allow our geophysicists to measure the depth to the source.  Most of what is being measured (by their interpretation) is pyrite and other sulfide minerals and magnetic mineral constituents.  The results are extremely encouraging.

A test run over our anomalies might be enlightening as we have so much data and we hope to be drilling soon (whatever soon means) which would be additive to the Ground Metrics information base.

It appears the Ground Metrics methodology is very light and very fast, and thus I suspect very inexpensive.  The land that we are working on is Arizona State land, and requires a permit for entry and everything else you might want to do including walking and taking samples of all kinds.  However we have hundreds of line miles of permits that would probably be applicable - so that would not have to be re-done.  Could Ground Metrics give me some estimate of the cost per line mile of their survey in moderate terrain that varies from pretty brush free to brushy?  

If this is effective we have some major programs throughout AZ where it could be used.

Also we continue our search for metal bearing breccia pipes on the Colorado Plateau primarily in Arizona.  These are characterized by a pyrite cap about 600 to 1200 feet deep (or more) and 300 + feet in diameter.  The pyrite cap is quite massive (avg. 300 to 600 feet in diameter and 200 feet thick and the semi vertical pipe is a resistivity low.  The speed of the Ground Metrics system and low cost might make this a good system for such exploration as these pipes are essentially blind.  And they are very profitable and contain in addition to uranium, copper, silver, gold, lead, zinc and, vanadium in variable amounts.

Jim