What stunning-looking drillcore ..you could make a great kitchen benchtop out of that!
One of the reasons that it looks so good of course is that it has been metamorphically recrystallised, so that the various metal sulphides have been separated out and grown into large crystalline grains.
This is an absolute gift to the metallurgists: this ore will process very easily, to produce a very high quality, very valuable nickel concentrate.
Yesterday's announcement of the discovery by Sirius of their new 'Bollinger' mineralisation is very significant indeed. They have given it a separate name to Nova because it looks like a new orebody. So now they appear to have two, and we are probably going to repeat the drill-out process we went through with Nova, watching it grow and grow from here.
This first hole into Bollinger hasn't even reached the bottom of mineralisation yet, after 125m in nickel sulphides, and the logging descriptions suggest that there will be a lot of ore grade within that 125m.
This immense vertical thickness is an absolute gift to mining engineers: perfect for low cost, bulk-tonnage underground mining.
The other great thing about the Bollinger discovery is its proximity to Nova (they may yet prove to be connected). All of the capital costs for the surface and underground development will be carried by Nova (and are priced into it on present valuations), and now Sirius have made what looks like another major discovery, not at the other end of the tenement block, but right next door, just 200m away, at exactly the same depth. They will just have to drive out and start stoping. No second decline is required.
Another complete gift to the mining engineers!
From an ongoing exploration point of view, it is also very significant that Bollinger has been found at the edge of the intense gravity high that forms the core of the magnetic feature called 'The Eye':
As I pointed out on another thread, these mafic-ultramafic intrusive complexes form gravity highs because they are denser than the surrounding rocks. And then when you add in a significant amount of even denser sulphides, you get an even stronger gravity high. So the target is a gravity high, and best gravity target of all is the highest part of the gravity high. That makes that gravity peak to the immediate southeast of the Bollinger discovery hole a very compelling target indeed.
The host rocks also form magnetic highs, because they are more magnetic than the surrounding rocks. And when you add in a significant amount of the magnetic iron sulphide pyrrhotite that accompanies the nickel sulphide pentlandite, you get an even stronger magnetic high. So the exploration target is a magnetic high, and the best part of it is the strongest magnetic high. And again this is what we have at and around Bollinger.
The nickel target then is an intense gravity high coinciding with an intense magnetic high, plus an EM response as well if the sulphides are at a shallow enough depth.
The commentator earlier who speculated that Sirius could be the next WMC might not be too far from the truth either. Western Mining was founded on its nickel discoveries at the Kambalda dome: a big, nickel-bearing ultramafic extrusive volcanic complex in the Archean Yilgarn Craton, most of which they had pegged. At the 'Eye', Sirius holds all of a big nickel-bearing mafic-ultramafic intrusive complex in the Proterozoic Fraser Range province.
These two nickel camps are a billion years apart in age, and quite different in mode of formation, but there are geological similarities: the more-localised, nickel-bearing magma bodies that have been preserved at The Eye are exactly the sort of magmatic source intrusions that would have originally underlain the Kambalda Dome, and would have been erupted there as nickel-bearing volcanic lava flows, spread over a much larger area.
Basically WMC found an ancient 'Archean' one that had erupted, whilst Sirius have found a younger 'Proterozoic' one that has been solidified in place at depth.
(For some reason many of Proterozoic ones tend to be preserved in the magmatic intrusion phase, as at Voisey's bay in Canada, and Granmuren in Scandinavia, probably because the earth's crust cooled and got thicker during the intervening 1,000 million years).
But anyway, I agree with the commentator who said "Sirius could be another WMC". They do seem to have found a potential cluster of Proterozoic nickel deposits, and these Proterozoic-aged intrusive nickel deposits can be very big indeed.
We shouldn't be surprised of course. There is an old saying in the mining industry: "The easiest place to find a new orebody is right next to the old one!", which appears to be exactly what Sirius have done!
(Don not act on anything I say though. My musings are purely for interest's sake. I am not a financial adviser and this is not financial advice)
SIR Price at posting:
$2.85 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Held
