Pendlandite RecognitionI liked bedrocker's message of a year ago.
September 08, 2012 - 01:13 PM
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Pentlandite Recognition
A well trained eye can distinguish, particularly if it's coarse grained, but it's difficult and can be dangerous - witness the old Cartaway estimates. For more fine grained ores it is usually not attempted visually. But in this case they have historic exploration drilling and ground examinations to go on and have strongly affirmed a constant regional Ni concentration ratio in the system similar to Sudbury. I take that to mean 100% sulphides translates to about 8% Ni wherever they assay the sulphide system ( or 24% pentlandite given it's average Ni content) over a 75 km length of the basin.
So I am assuming for the present that the intercept averaging 30% sulphides will average 2.4% Ni or close to it, 15% sulphides should average 1.2% Ni. We will only see for sure when the assay results come out but that's the assumption I'm working on. When they do hit an intercept of 100% sulphides, I expect it would run about 8% Ni. Assays will have the added value of associated copper, platinum, palladium, rhodium, and gold. A 2.4% Ni grade or lower would do just fine as a profitable ore.
It is a potentially value secondary holding for VMS and as it doesn't draw on the VMS treasury, a nice side bet to the Reed mine and other Cu-Zn-Ag-Au plays, however slow investors may be to recognize. Cina's infrastructure moves can only provide a boost in an overly worried market.