MOLYBDENUM - Nithi Mountain, British Columbia
Nithi Mountain is located in central British Columbia about 150 km west of Prince George. The property is 8 km south of the Village of Fraser Lake, which is on a major transportation corridor consisting of a major highway (HY 16) and a CN rail line. BC hydroelectric transmission lines are located at the base of Nithi Mountain. Canada’s largest producing molybdenum mine (Endako) is northwest of Nithi Mountain a distance of 18 km.
The Nithi Mountain property encompasses a very large, low-fluorine porphyry moly deposit. Molybdenite mineralization is hosted in a quartz stockwork hosted by the Lower Cretaceous Nithi quartz monsonite and the Casey monzogranite. Moly occurs within a broad area of argillic and potassic alteration as quartz moly veins and seams. This broad area of mineralization and alteration is known as the Alpha Trend with five zones (Gamma, Gamma West, Delta, Sigma and Theta) located along the trend.
The property was acquired in late 2003 when the price of moly began to price move from $3.00 a pound to over $38.00 a pound over the next two years. Previous moly exploration on Nithi Mountain took place during the period 1965 to 1981 by a number of junior exploration companies and Amax Exploration. This exploration took the form of soil geochemical sampling, trenching of various showings, some IP surveying, and limited percussion and diamond drilling.
Current exploration by Leeward Capital began in 2004 with the construction of a comprehensive GIS database and a brief field program evaluating known moly showings. All previous exploration information (including the location of moly showings, drillholes, and 6,000 soil samples) was compiled in this GIS database.
Initial exploration consisted of helicopter EM and magnetic surveys. Diamond drilling began in 2005 and continues to the present. Additional airborne gradiometer and radiometric surveys were completed in 2007 along with a LIDAR survey and additional soil geochemical surveys. This new data was interpreted to define the full extent of the alteration and potassic enrichment on Nithi Mountain.
By the end of 2007, there was sufficient drilling density to calculate an initial inferred resource on the Gamma Zone of 84 million tonnes grading 0.028 Mo. Initial drill testing of three other moly zones has also been carried out. Thus far, only about 20% of the potential area of moly mineralization has been evaluated. The planned drilling program in 2008 calls for the completion of an additional 200 diamond drillholes on the Delta, Sigma, and Theta zones.