Canada Finland PolandCanadian, Finnish and Polish polymetallic deposits.
Canadian:
We started in Ft. McMurray and flew over the tar sands operations to our final destination a 2,720 sq km land position in northeast Alberta of birch- and spruce-covered foothills that contain the polymetallic black shales.
Located within the property are six giant bulk mining targets each containing vast amounts of various metals on or just below the surface.
"Vast" doesn't really do it justice; here are some early test results from just one of the six locations: (Just imagine what the totals would be for the entire six deposits.)
Metal
Gross Metal/Oxide Range (lb)
Molybdenum
150,000,000 – 225,000,000
Nickel
293,000,000 – 419,000,000
Uranium
61,000,000 – 96,000,000
Vanadium
1,511,000,000 – 2,027,000,000
Zinc
683,000,000 – 940,000,000
Copper
169,000,000 – 217,000,000
Cobalt
46,000,000 – 63,000,000
Silver
750,000 – 2,125,000
Those aren't typos.
There are literally billions of tons of highly sought-after metals sitting right on the surface of this untouched land.
It's virgin wealth. It's a ground floor opportunity of the purest kind.
The entire property isn't even entirely accessible yet. The day before we arrived, the CEO took a separate chopper to hand clear better landing spots for our visit.
The small clearing we used for our first stop didn't exist two weeks ago...
Other areas weren't cleared at all. The final outcropping I got to see required a half-mile hike up a heavily wooded (and muddy) incline. The hike was manageable, but standing 20 feet above a rocky stream on a shale precipice with shaky footing was a bit scarier.
Of course, it will all be worth it.
Rust was seeping out of the shale. That's how close this abundance of metals is to the surface.
The shale averages 75 feet deep over thousands of acres. Once under production, it could supply the entire world with raw materials for the next century and beyond.
I can say I held it in my hand when it was untouched wilderness.
And you get to be in from the beginning on the metal equivalent of the tar sands.
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But can these ores be economically extracted?
Talvivaara Mining Company is economically extracting a polymetalic deposit.
Bioheap Leaching for Metals Extraction
By Brianna Panzica
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011
In 1977, two large ore deposits were discovered in eastern Finland.
These deposits containing concentrations of four different kinds of metals were mostly disregarded –they couldn’t be extracted using the methods available at that time.
But in 2004, a brand new company called Talvivaara Mining Company (LON: TALV) obtained the rights to the Kuusilampi and Kolmisoppi deposits, and in 2007 the company obtained mining permits for the areas.
This company held a secret weapon to making the mines useful – it was with the process of bioheap leaching that they discovered much more of these metals could be extracted.
Production at the mine started in October 2008 with the precipitation of the first metal sulphides. .
In the process of bioheap leaching natural bacteria from the area are used in oxidation to speed up metal leaching.
By this process, the coat of porous sulfide rock that is normally left behind in regular heap leaching is disintegrated, leaving behind much more area of the metals to be extracted.
This makes the excavation of polymetallic deposits possible – much more of the metals are extracted.
The mine consists of two deposits 3 km apart, Kuusilampi and Kolmisoppi, and has an annual production capacity of over 10 million tonnes of ore. The mine has reserves amounting to 1 billion tonnes of ore grading 0.22% nickel, 0.13% copper, 0.5% zinc and 0.02% cobalt thus resulting 2.2 million tonnes of nickel, 1.3 million tonnes of copper, 5 million tonnes of zinc and 0.2 million tonnes of cobalt. 90% of the nickel is deposited in black schist rock
Norilsk Nickel (LON: MNOD) signed a contract with the company to purchase their entire output of nickel and cobalt over the next 10 years at market price.
In 2010, the company also announced the production of uranium as a byproduct of the normal mining operations.
The mines are expected to have an annual output of about 350 tons of uranium.
Just this year, Cameco (NYSE: CCJ) also signed an agreement with Talvivaara that will allow them to build a uranium extraction circuit at the mine and continue purchasing uranium.
The mines have an estimated life of at least 25 years, and they are expected to have an annual output of about 30,000 tons of nickel, plus substantial tonnage of the other metals.
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There are also huge black shale deposits in Poland that cover over half of the land mass of Poland. Recent bioleaching tests of black shale ore from an industrial operation using acidophilic and thermophilic bacteria at an ambient temperature of 108 deg F gave a 92% recovery rate each for copper and silver. The other metals were not tested, but just the copper and silver recoveries show that the deposits could be economically developed using bioleaching techniques.