By ADELLE LARMOUR
As uranium market prices continue to climb, so have the number of claims staked in the Sibley Basin, northeast of Thunder Bay.
Within the last two years, more than 6,000 claims have been staked, says Gerry White, acting resident geologist of the Ontario Geological Survey (OGS) for Thunder Bay North District. This represents more than 100,000 hectares or more than 50 per cent of the Sibley Basin.
Sometimes referred to as the Nipigon Basin, geologists have discovered similarities to the Athabasca Basin in northern Saskatchewan, which supplies 30 per cent of the world’s uranium.
“It has the same age-type rocks where you’ve got much younger Proterozoic rocks overlying the basement pre-Cambrian rocks,” White describes, adding that uranium deposits pool between the crossing of the two vastly different ages of rock.
OGS resident geologist John Scott for the Thunder Bay South District says many of the juniors are exploring occurrences discovered in the late 70s when there was a high demand for uranium.
However, market prices dropped and remained low for about 30 years. It has only been within the last two to three years that global demand for uranium has driven prices from approximately US $10-per pound to its peak of US $140-per pound in July 2007.
It now sits at US $90-per pound (mid Nov. 07), continuing the surge in exploration.
Accessible by logging roads, only a handful of juniors hold approximately 90 per cent of those staked claims.
Vancouver-based RPT Uranium Corporation, formerly Rampart Ventures, currently has the largest land package, touting 98,960 hectares, according to recent company reports.
There appears to be two areas of exploration upon which the company is focusing: the Malborne Lake claim group and Split Rapids Zone.
In an October 17, 2007 report, the company announced a 2,500-metre diamond drill program on the Frazer Creek uranium zone located on its Malborne Lake claim block. The first eight grab samples assayed from 0.025 per cent to 1.486 per cent U3O8, with an average of 0.519 per cent U3O8, according to an Oct. 24, 2007 news release. To date, 14 separate radioactive occurrences on the Malborne Lake group have been located over a four-kilometre length. A radiometric-magnetic-EM survey of the property was recently performed.
A July 30, 2007 press release announced a 10,000-metre diamond drilling program, focusing upon several clusters of uranium-bearing veins along a 900-metre long Archean iron formation.
Of that program, 33-holes totalling 3,827 metres have been drilled on the Split Rapids Zone. Seventeen mineralized zones were sampled with no assays received at the time of writing.
RPT Uranium has discovered some hot spots in the Split Rapids Zone indicating 1.50 metres of 2.99 per cent U3O8, 0.72 metres of 4.68 per cent U3O8 and 6.35 metres of 0.222 per cent U3O8.
Another junior that has had some positive results is Benton Resources Corp. The Thunder Bay-based exploration company has several uranium joint ventures in the Sibley/Nipigon Basin: one with Tri-Gold Resources and another with Grandcru Resources Corp.
Both companies can earn up to 60 per cent interest by each completing $1,000,000 in exploration expenditures, according to the website.
Company reports on the Grandcru JV announced the completion of a 580-line km airborne survey and eight assays that returned grades up to 0.21 per cent U3O8. Other samples returned assays grading up to 1.01 per cent U3O8, 71.0 grams per tonne silver, 0.20 per cent copper, and 0.15 per cent lead.
Benton’s Tri-Gold JV commenced a drill program at the end of September to test a series of conductive zones in the central portion of the property, as interpreted from the airborne MegaTEM survey previously performed.
Gravity West Mining Corp. has signed a contract to carry out 3,000 metres of drilling on its 100 per cent-owned Sibley uranium property, according to a Sept. 12, 2007 press release.
The property includes an eight-kilometre-long section of the Black Sturgeon fault zone extending northward from RPT Uranium Corp.’s ground, directly onto Gravity West’s land package.
White says the area is virtually unexplored, but has potential because of its accessibility, making it more economically feasible.
“It’s getting its big look now, and time will tell whether or not it is anything like Athabasca.”
