A Timmins nickel explorer thinks it’s sitting on one of the world’s biggest nickel deposits.
EV Nickel posted a first-ever mineral resource estimate this week from its Shaw Dome Project, a once productive nickel mining area that’s showing signs of new life.
The Toronto company has been a fast mover since arriving in the Timmins area less than a year ago in acquiring and expanded upon the property located 25 kilometres southeast of the city.
They’ve been poking holes in the northeast corner of the 30,000-hectare property called the CarLang area. EV Nickel has been showcasing it as a huge tonnage, low-grade nickel deposit.
An area of exploration focus is a smaller area within CarLang called the A Zone. Since last April, 28 holes have drilled for 8,300 metres with the assay results folded into this current mineral estimate.
The company is now reporting a defined nickel resource estimate at CarLang’s A Zone of 1 billion tonnes with an average grade of 0.24 per cent nickel.
There’s a higher grade core of 290 million tonnes at 0.27 per cent in the indicated category and 203 million tonnes at 0.27 per cent on the inferred side.
The lower grade core shows 219 million tonnes at 0.22 per cent indicated nickel and 294 million tonnes inferred at 0.21 per cent.
In a Feb.28 news release, the company said this resource “puts it into the league of the largest undeveloped nickel deposits in the world.”
This estimate, the company said, represents just 20 per cent of what’s known along a 10-kilometre trend of mineralization.
EV Nickel maintains CarLang contains a “massive amount of potential mineralization” that extends well beyond the A Zone. That’s based upon its own drill results and what they’ve interpreted from historical drilling data on the property.
"Defining this enormous maiden mineral resource for our Large Scale A Zone is a major milestone for EV Nickel," said Sean Samson, company president-CEO in the release.
"The A Zone is just the beginning of the CarLang Area because we know the host units have been identified over approximately five times the strike length. So if we consider the full potential of the CarLang Trend- this is the type of generational opportunity, which is near surface and in an excellent location, that the world needs for a supply of Clean Nickel™ to help fuel the energy transition."
Just to the south, EV Nickel has a higher grade deposit in an area dubbed the W4 Zone that comes with an historic mineral estimate of 677,000 tonnes of nickel at 1.0 per cent. It’s considered Class One nickel and that estimate was published by a previous company in 2010.
The company has been running a winter drill program on that part of the Shaw Dome to validate and firm up that estimate for an updated nickel calculation to be released in the second half of this year.
As the company name implies, EV Nickel wants to supply the North American electric vehicle with product.
For what it has identified in the ground, EV Nickel claims there’s enough contained nickel there that can supply the material needed for batteries in 34 million electric vehicles.
EV Nickel not only wants to mine nickel but it wants to process it with clean technology while promoting their project as a carbon carbon and storage project.
Mineralization at CarLang is hosted in ultramafic rock, the company said which natural absorbs and sequesters carbon dioxide.
This is key part of the company’s “clean nickel” strategy. EV Nickel said it’s working with leading consultants on gain an understanding of carbon capture potential and how to integrate its benefits into any future nickel production.
