Northern Dynasty Mines Inc. announced Friday that test holes drilled to the east of its Pebble Project site northwest of Iliamna has revealed what the company is calling a very substantial higher-grade deposit adjoining Pebble.
Bruce Jenkins, NDM's chief of operations, said two recently drilled test holes had served to reinforce the recent discovery of significant new mineral deposits east of Pebble. In an interview Oct. 21, he said the area known as the East Block might hold "the mother zone" of deposits in the area.
"While the results are exciting and bear further investigation, they will not impact the feasibility study that Northern Dynasty is currently preparing for the proposed Pebble Mine," Jenkins said in an e-mail accompanying a press release from the mining company's parent, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., based in British Columbia. "It is expected to be completed on schedule."
Corporate officials said extensive drilling would be needed to fully delineate the "major discovery."
"These new holes, combined with those announced on Sept. 2, 2005, indicate the new porphyry system hosts a substantial volume of copper-gold-molybdenum mineralized material," corporate President and CEO Ronald W. Thiessen said in the press release.
NDM said the mineralized system appeared to extend much deeper than the depths drilled to the west and is continuous in most drill holes over their entire lengths below the surface covering of volcanic and sedimentary rocks. The east, south, north and depth boundaries of this major porphyry, referred to as the East Stock, are unknown, but the company predicts the minimum expected diameter would be twice its known size, that is, at least 5,000 feet across, NDM said.
Jenkins confirmed that NDM would continue its drilling program through the fall to outline the full extent of the geological system, and continue work on a mine plan.
In a Sept. 26 press release announcing core data from other holes drilled into the new zone, NDM said the discovery had the potential to "significantly enhance the size and overall grade of the Pebble deposit."
"These holes are exciting," Jenkins said Friday, though he remained cautious. "They're the kind of thing that has people walking six inches off the carpet. Does it mean there is an economic ore body there? No," he said.
Not definitively, at any rate.
Core samples from two more holes are being assayed now and results will be announced in a few weeks. What is already known has led to a decision to sink at least three more holes "just to get a better geological picture" before drilling stops for the winter, Jenkins said.
"That effort will produce the foundation for a board decision whether to drill more next year," he said. "I don't know what that decision will be, but if I were a betting man, I'd say there was a fair chance we will be drilling more extensively."
Jenkins noted that company geologists were enthusiastic about the possibility that the East Block area may actually hold "the mother zone" of deposits in the region. If an economic ore body is determined to exist, NDM would have options.
It could extend the size of its planned Pebble pit. Then again, depending on the nature and extent of the East Block deposit, the company might decide to drill a block cave mine into the eastern wall of the pit instead.
Its run-up to submission of permit applications for the Pebble site may be impacted by future assay results in the East Block. Jenkins said NDM might decide to submit permits on what is already known and work to amend those later, or it could decide to defer permit applications until they have a better handle on the whole project.
NDM is spending more than $37 million this year in drilling, engineering, environmental and socioeconomic studies related to its ongoing feasibility study expected to be completed late this year or early next. The company is planning to submit environmental permit applications for large-scale mining operations sometime in 2006.
