From today's Reno Gazette Full article here
Quaterra eyes Bear Deposit exploration
6:40 AM, Oct 18, 2012
Written by Keith Trout
Tom Patton, president and CEO of Quaterra Resources said his company is ready to move forward at the Bear Deposit located just north of the old Anaconda pit and Arimetco mining properties.
Quaterra is the parent company of Quaterra Alaska and Singatse Peak Services, which is conducting copper exploration in the local area; and speaking during an interview on the Smartstox talk show with Stanlie Hunt, Patton said, “We’re getting ready to tackle the ‘Bear’,” referring to upcoming activities planned at the Bear porphyry Deposit.
Patton said the Bear Deposit was a large copper resource discovered by Anaconda, which mined the Yerington mine for 25 years, but exploration hadn’t been done there since the 1960s.
Based on historical reports from Anaconda, Patton said, this deposit has 4 billion pounds of copper in about 500 million tons of material, averaging 4 percent grade copper., He said he hopes there are gold values also, adding, “I think it could be much larger.”
While pursuing the Bear project, Patton said Quaterra is also moving forward with the pre-feasibility study at the McArthur project.
He added that as the company moves forward on the local projects, it plans to “get rid of non-core assets.” The company recently sold shares in an eastern Nevada project as part of the goal to monetize non-strategic assets to fund work in the Yerington district.
Patton said Quaterra is the largest landowner in the Yerington district with over 40 square miles of property and the Yerington District is the largest one in the United States without a major mining company involved.
The Yerington pit property received a favorable economic assessment in January, and the MacArtur had a positive preliminary economic assessment (PEA) in May. Patton said the company is drilling the residuals, tailings and dumps at the Yerington mine, with plans to process it as part of a district-wide oxide project. He also said drilling the oxide residuals had been a recommendation of the PEA to see if they could make the McArthur project more attractive. The Yerington Pit and Bear Deposit projects cover 14.1 square miles, with 8,000 acre-feet of water rights.
Patton said potential investors haven’t taken a lot of notice of the recent agreement with the EPA in which Quaterra volunteered to pay 50 percent of the cost of repairing and upgrading the fluid management system at the former Arimetco mining property. He said while the initial purchase of the property included some protections, this agreement included “covenant not to sue” from the EPA.
“It’s more definitive” compared to the acquisition assurances, he said. “We’re not held responsible for the pre-existing conditions. That’s a big deal for the company. It’s part of the evolution in the district.”
The McArthur project is billed as a stand-alone, fully-stripped copper oxide deposit with potential for deposit. The company says the May, 2012, PES demonstrated the McArthur had potential for development as a large-scale copper oxide heap leach operation.
Quaterra plans additional drilling at the north end of the McArthur site to investigate integrating deeper acid-soluble and primary sulfide copper into an expanded McArthur mine plan.
Singatse Peak Services is planning an aggressive, two-year exploration program at the Yerington pit project to validate historic drilling data, for resource estimate and technical reports, including both core and reverse circulation drilling, geophysical surveys and preliminary metallurgical studies for evaluating the copper mineralization there.