Blackstone Minerals Consolidating Canadian Cobalt
Blackstone Minerals (ASX: BXS) listed on the ASX in January 2017 on the back of three Western Australia-based projects.
The Red Gate and Middle Creek gold projects and the Silver Swan South gold-nickel project all provided encouraging results and attracted a good deal of investor attention during the company’s first few months on the Australian bourse.
However, it was an opportunity to provide its shareholders with exposure to the potentially lucrative and fast growing cobalt market that Blackstone Minerals just couldn’t pass up.
In July, Blackstone Minerals entered into a binding Heads of Agreement to acquire 100 per cent of the Little Gem project, located in British Columbia, Canada.
“Our three Australian assets are all very good early exploration projects; however, our aim has always been to find a company making asset, which is what we believe Little Gem has the potential to be,” Blackstone Minerals managing director Scott Williamson told The Resources Roadhouse.
The Little Gem project was discovered in the 1930s by prospectors who identified a pink cobalt-bloom on weathered mineralisation.
There has been very little modern-day exploration conducted at Little Gem with the main activities being airborne geophysical surveys, including magnetic, radiometric and electromagnetic (EM) surveys carried out in the 1970s and a further two drill holes completed in 1986.
Work undertaken by the original explorers resulted in the development of three adits with drilling carried out underground and detailed channel sampling taken.
Results from this work generated some exceptional cobalt and gold assays including:
Surface channel samples of massive sulphides returning assays up to:
0.4 metres at 5.7 per cent cobalt and 1,574grams per tonne (≈50oz) gold.
Underground adit channel sampling of massive sulphides returned multiple high-grade intersections including:
1.8 m at 4.4 per cent cobalt and 73g/t gold; and
2m at 3.1 per cent cobalt and 76g/t gold.
Historic underground drilling from adits returned multiple intersections including:
1.8m at 2.4 per cent cobalt and 112g/t gold;
3.3m at 1.4 per cent cobalt and 12.3g/t gold; and
2.9m at 0.9 per cent cobalt and 12g/t gold.
High-grade cobalt and gold mineralisation was demonstrated to be open along strike and down dip.
Blackstone Minerals’ move into the cobalt space had it playing catch up to other companies that had entered earlier, but it didn’t take long for it to make its mark.
The first hole drilled as part of the company’s maiden drilling program at Little Gem intersected massive, semi-massive and disseminated mineralisation, returning:
4.3m at 1 per cent cobalt and 15g/t gold, including 1.1m at 3 per cent cobalt and 44g/t gold.
Importantly, these initial results were consistent with the historic drilling and adit channel sampling data.
The first hole only tested the upper portion of the mineralised target but was able to identify multiple zones of massive sulphide (cobalt-gold) mineralisation within a broader alteration halo.
“After finalising the acquisition around September 2017, we were able to hit the ground immediately,” Williamson said.
“The very first hole confirmed the data we had inherited and gave us confidence that we really are onto something at Little Gem.
“Our belief is growing that we are dealing with something that could be one of the highest-grade cobalt-gold targets in the world today.”
With the project demonstrating its potential, Blackstone became eager to see how the geological setting shaped up against other, world-wide, cobalt-gold occurrences.
The one that stood out was the Bou-Azzer primary cobalt district in Morocco where cobalt has been mined for the past 75 years.
“There are fifty different deposits within that belt, not just cobalt, a lot of other metals too, it is a highly-endowed base metals province, which has produced over 100,000 tonnes of cobalt metal,” Williamson said.
“What we have been able to determine is that we have the same geological setting as Bou-Azzer with the contact between serpentinized ultramafics and granodiorites at Little Gem.”
Galvanised by the geological outcome, Blackstone made its next move, which was to acquire the extensive land holdings along strike from Little Gem, giving the company control of an impressive land position over the proven high-grade gold and cobalt mineralised belt.
The acquisition increased the Little Gem project’s land tenure to approximately 335 square kilometres while taking the target strike zone from 12 kilometres to over 48 kilometres.
“The similarity to Bou-Azzer was hard to ignore and was the impetus behind pegging the entire belt wherever that same setting occurred,” Williamson explained.
“We now have four times the strike extent potential and we believe we could be sitting on something that is much larger than the couple of prospects we made the original acquisition on.
“This district has been well-explored and is well-understood for gold, but we are the first to be looking here for cobalt, and the first, we believe to understand the geology and the similarities to Bou-Azzer.”
The work Blackstone has carried out to date has not only verified the previously identified mineralisation at the Little Gem prospect.
It has also provided information on the Jewel gold-copper prospect and discovered a new high-grade gold-copper prospect named Roxey.
The Roxey gold-copper prospect is located 1.5km west-southwest of Little Gem and sits along strike to that prospect’s cobalt–gold mineralisation.
Blackstone visually identified Roxey while undertaking due diligence on Little Gem, taking rock chip samples within the target area, which assayed up to 24g/t gold, 1.9 per cent copper and 24g/t silver.
Mineralisation at Roxey is associated with quartz-pyrite altered diorite containing chalcopyrite.
Surface rock chip samples were also taken to verify the mineralisation at the Jewel prospect, located 1.1km north-northeast of Little Gem.
These returned assays of up to 98g/t gold and 3.2 per cent copper.
Blackstone interpreted these results to confirm its earlier investigations that revealed historical samples of up to 0.6m at 75g/t gold and 0.45m at 153 g/t gold from underground and surface channel sampling and up to 6.9g/t gold, 19.25 per cent copper and 137g/t silver from underground rock chip sampling.
Mineralisation at Jewel sits in a serpentinized ultramafic near the easterly trending/steep south dipping contact with the quartz diorite/granodiorite that hosts the Little Gem prospect.
“Jewel and Roxey aren’t cobalt targets, they’re copper-gold targets,” Williamson explained.
“So again, we are dealing with geology similar to Bou-Azzer, this time being multiple base metals occurrences with high gold grades.
“This is the sort of mineralisation that will work in any commodity price environment.
“We don’t need the cobalt price to keep running for this project to work.”
Blackstone’s immediate focus is the completion of the maiden drill program at Little Gem to follow up the outstanding initial results and to further understand the full potential of the prospect.
This is expected to reboot in Q2 2018 with drilling focused on delineating the extents of the mineralisation with potential to deliver a maiden resource in the medium term.
“We are very pleased that we have been able to make such rapid progress at Little Gem,” Williamson said.
“We have already moved it along to be a project with real scale in a district that hosts such compelling high-grade cobalt and gold mineralisation.
“We can’t wait to complete an aggressive exploration campaign over the coming year.”
Blackstone Minerals Limited (ASX: BSX)
…The Short Story
HEAD OFFICE
Suite 3, Level 3
24 Outram Street
West Perth, WA, 6005
Ph: +61 8 9425 5217
Email: admin@blackstoneminerals.com.au
Web: www.blackstoneminerals.com.au
DIRECTORS
Hamish Halliday, Scott Williamson, Andrew Radonjic, Steve Parsons, Bruce McFadzean, Michael Konnert
