FYI July 25, 2012 Via Minesite.com
In A Region Of Argentina Populated Exclusively By The Majors, Artha Resources Continues To Punch Above Its Weight
By Ryan Jackson in Vancouver
One might expect that a claims map of an an area which hosts the largest silver deposit in history, currently hosts one of the largest primary Silver Mines in the world, and hosts the largest sedimentary exhalative deposit in the world, would show little room for new players. In British Columbia every inch of ground surrounding the Copper Mountain mine has been staked by excited prospectors.
Todd McMurray
Down in Argentina though, it seems the tough operating environment has kept all but the most hardy away, leaving Todd McMurray and his team at Artha Resources free reign to explore one of the most prospective and untouched mining jurisdictions in the world. “That’s part of why we like it,” explains Todd, “we’d rather be a leader than a follower.”
Taking advantage of the lack of competition, Artha has staked a massive land package in the Bolivian tin-silver belt, which runs through Argentina, and is on the ground exploring for silver, gold, and rare earth metals. “You’ve got two massive mines in the region and nobody is exploring there”, says Todd. “It’s a very favourable place to be, so from our perspective the potential of the region is huge.”
Probably the most prospective property in Artha’s portfolio, though others are beginning to rival it, is the Pirquitas property which surrounds Silver Standard’s mine of the same name, forming almost a full doughnut around it.
“The Pirquitas mine is operating by mining an area that swells up and is bisected by a dry river valley”, says Todd. “If you follow that structure up, that’s our ground. What we were looking for was the extension down dip, then – boom! - we found two big classic induced polarization (IP) anomalies, one of them bigger than Pirquitas, right down dip at the same level based on the angle.”
Not a bad result from a clever bit of theory.“You think of all the tick boxes you check before you drill. It’s got all of them!” says Todd.
The targets have been named Noella Breccia and Pirquitas Norte, and in early July Artha came one step closer to setting the drill rigs turning: the company now has community approval for permitting. Todd explains: “There’s two ways you can get a permit, one is through community agreement and the second is through an arbitration process. The fact that we’ve achieved community agreement is a big success for us, it’s the ideal situation.”
Barring other environmental or technical issues, community agreement obligates the mines department to provide Artha with permitting. And, having met with the minister of mines personally, Todd is pretty confident that in the next two to five weeks the company will have all of the permitting in place.
And at Pirquitas, there’s also the possibility of a value add for Silver Standard. Waste from the Silver Standard mine is currently trucked seven kilometres, but an alternative route, through Artha’s ground would save five kilometres off that. “Depending on mine life, the savings could be up to US$100 million”, reckons Todd.
But while many investors see drilling on Pirquitas as Artha’s most important move, Todd points out that their Organullo project also holds great promise – and, with a million ounce target already identified it just might beat Pirquitas out of the gates. Many have discounted Organullo because they believe that Cardero Resources, the previous owner, offloaded the property because it wouldn’t fly, it turns out that the situation is rather more complicated. Cardero remains interested in the project - that’s why it still has a stake in it.
“The institutional players who backed their big coal deal required them to focus on mining and stop exploring in Argentina”, explains Todd. “There’s a heap leach target there with potentially half a million to a million and a half ounces”, he says. And, while the geology at Organullo has proved challenging for previous drillers, through consultation with Artha’s contractors, Todd and his team think they have it figured out.
“In the past recoveries of drill core have been poor”, explains Todd. “The rock itself is highly fractured and just crumbles and when you pull it out of the core. You’ve essentially lost 80 per cent of it. One of the first things we did in our due diligence was run it by our drill contractor and they brought in a mud specialist. The idea is you mix mud, just like when you’re drilling for oil and gas, to make the water heavier. It keeps the hole from crumbling so you end up with a better sample. We’re convinced that a combination of drilling technique and drill bit selection can solve the problem technically.”
Given that drilling at Organullo has previously produced intercepts as high as 446 metres at 0.2 grams per tonne gold, the natural question is: how will better core recovery change the results? “If you lost 80 per cent of the core on that hole is that 446 metres at a gram? That’s the science that we need to figure out”, says Todd. “We suspect there’s a relationship between the loss of the core and the grade.”
Though precious metals were the original mandate at Artha, Todd explains that the company has now stumbled upon a couple of rare earth prospects which are just too good to ignore. Two properties in particular have been drawing attention: the Susques and Cachi properties.
Susques is a 415 square kilometre property in Northwestern Argentina where the company has been pulling up world class neodymium samples. “We have a huge system, six kilometres long, and we expect sometime this year we are going to get Susques permitted and that’s going to turn into something very interesting.”
Todd concedes that the rare earth sector is an extremely difficult one to succeed in. “The odds of success in rare earths are extremely limited”, he says. “The reason is that processing is extremely expensive so the most successful mines have by-products; gold or silver.” Which is why, when samples from Susques came back, Todd and the team were ecstatic. “Holy smokes!” he says, “That sample came back 6% heavy rare earths, 17 of 18 grams silver, and it had all these other metals which totally lit us up!”
The company has followed the advice of Alex Knox, one of the world’s leading rare earth geologists and member of Artha’s advisory board, and staked up a big claim. Artha now controls 95 per cent of the structure. While permitting has been an issue in the past, Todd thinks that the local community has warmed up to the idea. “Sometime this year we are going to get Susques permitted”, he says.
Meanwhile, the Cachi property has been drawing considerable interest from the Far East. “We have a lot of interest from the Japanese regarding Cachi”, says Todd. “Since we picked up our exploration program we’ve had a number of meetings with JOGMEC, the Japanese government exploration arm, and they are very aggressive right now.”
While the main focus for Artha is most definitely not on Cachi, Todd believes that a little work here could draw in a good partner: “We figure if we spend around US$100,000 we can package it up for a national company to explore”, he says.
Silver, gold, and now rare earths: Artha has certainly put together a large and diverse portfolio in Argentina. With permitting expected to come through soon at Pirquitas and maybe at Susques as well, the company is now on good footing to test some very impressive targets. Of course exploration is expensive, and the juniors are hurting, so where will the money come from? “A few different groups have stepped in and said that if we get our permits they’ll fund us”, says Todd. Hopefully we’ll see drills turning on Artha’s exploration projects very soon.