So we are finally seeing the pieces falling into place. The Feds and especially the Ontario government have suddenly concentrated effort and focus on the huge deposits and potentially billions of dollars of revenue from the multi-mineral rich Ring of Fire district in the lower James Bay region of northern Ontario.
The Ring of Fire has been ignited.
This vast area of what some would describe as nothing but swampland and scrub has now become the focus of the new Ontario government. And for very good reason. Literally, billions of dollars of rock lay underneath that "swampland".
There have been four major deposits discovered in the Ring of Fire to date. They are :
Cliffs Chromite Project involves the largest known North American chromite deposit, located in one of the most remote areas of Ontario, the Far North. Exploration to date has consisted of geophysics and diamond drilling to delineate the Black Thor chromite zone. The current inferred mineral resource estimate indicates the Black Thor deposit contains approximately 69.5 million tonnes at a grade of about 31.9% Cr2O3 (from Cliffs Website).
The Big Daddy Chromite property is a joint venture with KWG Resources, Cliffs and Bold Resources.
- Drilled over a strike length of 1.3 km, and a depth of 365 m.
- NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate complete (May 2010).
- 90% of chromium is contained in a tightly constrained high grade zone of 23.2 Mt grading 40.66 % Cr2O3 in the indicated resource category.
- High grades combined with metallurgical studies indicate a specification range of metallurgical grade direct shipping “lump” ore that can be reduced to high value ferrochrome (from KWG website).
And then there's Noront Resources, the company that started a huge claim staking rush with their discovery of Eagle’s Nest, a high-grade nickel-copper-platinum group element (PGE) deposit. Many believe and for good reason, this project will be the first that is mined in the ROF. The mine has an expected mine life of 11 years with the potential for more then 9 additional years. Eagle’s Nest is expecting to be in production by 2016-2017. On September 4, 2012 Noront released the results of the Feasibility Study for Eagle’s Nest.
| Tonnes |
Nickel |
Copper |
Platinum |
Palladium |
Gold |
| |
(X 1,000) |
(%) |
(%) |
(g/tonne) |
(g/tonne) |
(g/tonne) |
| Mineral Reserves |
| Proven |
5264
|
2.02
|
1.04
|
1.01
|
3.45
|
0.19
|
| Probable |
5867
|
1.38
|
0.72
|
0.78
|
2.76
|
0.18
|
| Proven and Probable |
11131
|
1.68
|
0.87
|
0.89
|
3.09
|
0.18
|
| Mineral Resources ( exclusive of Mineral Reserves ) |
| Inferred |
8996
|
1.1
|
1.14
|
1.16
|
3.49
|
0.3
|
|
And lastly, the Blackbird Chromite deposit owned by Noront as well.
The Blackbird chromite deposit is located less than 2 kilometres away from Eagle’s Nest and offers significant potential. The current mineral resource is:
Measured resource 9.3 M tonnes @ 37.4% chromite with a Cr:Fe ratio of 2.00
Indicated resource 11.2 M tonnes @ 34.4% chromite with a Cr:Fe ratio of 1.95
Inferred resources 23.5 M tonnes @ 33.1% chromite with a Cr:Fe ratio of 1.97
The chromite mineralization at Blackbird remains open at depth. Blackbird is one of a number of large tonnage, high quality chromite discoveries in the Ring of Fire. These discoveries suggest that the Ring of Fire may rival South Africa’s Bushveld Complex in terms of total chromite resource
(from Noront's website)
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And that's not all. Noront also has the Blackbird Chromite deposit, the AT12 VMS deposit, the Eagle Two VMS deposit, Thunderbird Vanadium/Titanium deposit and the Triple Gold deposit.
Add to all of the above the fact that only a small percentage of the Ring of Fire has been explored and you quickly understand what all the excitement is about and why government is scrambling quickly to get all the details worked out. With Noront and Cliffs stating that they will be mining by 2016-2017, government needs to work fast. And now it appears that they are ready to do that.
The Ring of Fire has been ignited and will burn for many years to come. I am proud and happy to be a shareholder in this region.
strato
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