Mining Analyst

Garibaldi Resources is drilling a nickel copper magmatic sulfide system at its Nickel Mountain project in the Golden Triangle of British Columbia. I've discussed it in a recent blog post. My position has been that so far they haven't drilled any new areas not already known from exploration conducted between the 1960's and 1990. Yes, they have intercepted massive sulfides over significant intervals that exceed the results of historic drilling. This could be for various reasons including poor drilling with lots of core loss in the historical programs. More likely, they have encountered the thicker sequence of mineralization within the historic zones.

Excelsior Mining is developing the Gunnison copper project in Arizona. It is an In-Situ-Recovery (ISR) project and many people including a significant portion of the industry itself are not familiar, or at least not comfortable, with it. ISR involves drilling wells and injecting a dilute acid to dissolve copper from fractured rocks. The pregnant solution is then recovered and standard solvent extraction and electrowinning is used to produce a copper cathode (sheets of nearly-pure copper that are sold directly to manufacturers and therefore no refining is required). Lack of familiarity by the market is usually an opportunity for astute and fearless investors, and it is the case here.