SEAL LAKE COPPER SILVER, Labrador
Playfair Mining Ltd. is has acquired, by staking, a 100% interest in 673 claims covering 16,825 hectares in the Seal Lake area of Central Labrador. The property covers some 136 copper and copper-silver occurrences including 16 copper-silver showings and 9 copper silver prospects, all discovered mainly via prospecting in the 1950's. Almost all the showings and prospects occur within a consistent and laterally extensive stratigraphic interval - the basal gray shale of the Upper Adeline Island Formation. The copper-silver enriched Adeline Island Formation is believed to form a canoe shape, with the rock unit outcropping over an estimated area measuring about 33km long by up to 4.4km wide.
Playfair's Seal Lake Copper Silver Project covers the entire mapped extent of the favourable sedimentary unit and its probable subsurface continuation.
The Seal Lake Basin has been explored intermittently for copper since 1950 by a number of senior companies, including Frobisher, Kenneco (a Kennecott subsidiary), Brinex, Beth-Canada (a subsidiary of Bethlehem Steel) and Noranda Exploration. Historical work was conducted at a time when copper prices were low and infrastructure was not as advanced as it is today. Now, with copper trading at much higher prices, the Trans-Labrador Highway 110 km to the south and the Churchill Falls Hydro dam 180 km to the southwest, the preliminary results obtained by this group of companies suggest that Seal Lake is a large, target-rich area with potentially economically significant mineralization. The project area is located 140km northwest of Goose Bay and importantly a hydro project access road is only 50km west of the western limit of the property.
Mineralization at Seal Lake has been recognized since the 1970's as a reduced facies sediment-hosted copper-silver mineralization of Kuperschiefer-type. It is most closely analogous to the White Pine deposit in Michigan, USA that is reported by the USGS to contain 688 million tonnes grading 1.2% copper and 40 gpt silver.
Europe's Kupferschiefer (medieval miners term for "copper shale") Basin is host to one of the biggest sediment-hosted copper districts of the world, second only to the Central African Copperbelt. The earliest traces of mining in the Kupferschiefer date back to prehistoric times with the main mineralized regions in Germany and Poland being mined systematically since medieval times. Several major mines are currently operating in Poland where the deposit at Lubin is reported by the USGS to contain 2,600 million tonnes containing 2% copper and 30 gpt silver. Table 2 below illustrates the impressive size and grade of such sedimentary deposits found around the world.
Previous work at Seal Lake has seen some very interesting results reported by major mining companies. Playfair believes this data is relevant and reliable, but notes that these historic data have not been verified. Chip sample results reported by Noranda in 1991 show that "Mineralization in the area of interest consists of disseminated chalcocite with lesser bornite and chalcopyrite in grey-green reduced shales. The Whiskey Lake No. 150 showing had the best results. This was 2.94% Cu and 45.85 g/t Ag over 11.0 m which includes 5.1% Cu and 72.67g/t Ag over 4.0m". Table 1 below shows select highlight copper-silver mineralization of the Seal Lake Copper-Silver Camp.
Table 1 Seal Lake Historical Channel or DDH Highlights
| Location |
Type |
Metres * |
Copper % |
Silver gpt |
| Whiskey Lake 150 |
Chip |
11.0 |
2.9 |
45.9 |
| Ellis |
Chip |
4.9 |
2.5 |
93.0 |
| Ellis |
DDH |
4.3 |
1.7 |
51.8 |
| Adeline Island |
Chip |
6.4 |
2.5 |
na |
| Adeline Island |
Chip |
5.3 |
2.1 |
na |
| Adeline Island |
DDH |
2.4 |
2.5 |
11.0 |
| Adeline Island |
DDH |
2.6 |
1.1 |
5.5 |
| Adeline Island |
DDH |
3.5 |
1.9 |
8.2 |
| Adeline Island |
DDH |
1.6 |
4.7 |
42.2 |
* true widths unknown
Table 2 Select Global Copper-Silver Sedimentary Deposits
(Kupferschiefer type or reduced environment) (After USGS Open File Report 03-107)
| Deposit |
Mt (millions) |
Copper % |
Silver gpt |
Country |
| Lubin |
2,600.0 |
2.0 |
30.0 |
Poland |
| White Pine |
688.0 |
1.2 |
40.0 |
United States |
| Presque Isle |
90.7 |
1.3 |
5.0 |
United States |
| Mansfeld |
75.0 |
2.9 |
150.0 |
Germany |
| Ghanzi (Hana Mining) |
93.2 |
1.5 |
17.5 |
Botswana |
| Boseto (Discovery Metals) |
60.4 |
1.4 |
19.5 |
Botswana |
| Juaramento |
59.2 |
0.8 |
19.2 |
Argentina |
| Richelsdorf |
42.0 |
1.0 |
25.0 |
Germany |
| Redstone |
37.0 |
3.9 |
11.3 |
Canada |
| Boleo |
18.7 |
3.4 |
9.0 |
Mexico |
| Klein Aub |
18.0 |
2.0 |
45.0 |
Namibia |
Playfair has completed a full digital compilation of historical exploration and government geoscientific data for the region. Playfair is now ready to carry out a winter 2011 Phase 1 winter diamond drill program on the copper-silver mineralization located on the west and east parts of the sedimentary basin.