New drill holes on the Twin Metals Minnesota Maturi deposit on the massive Duluth metallurgical complex indicate the presence of yet another high grade nickel-copper zone.
LONDON (MINEWEB) – In what Duluth Metals CEO, Chris Dundas, described in an email to Mineweb as yet another ‘exciting’ piece of news, the company has reported that a new high grade zone of nickel-copper mineralisation has been intersected on the southern edge of its Maturi deposit within the Duluth/Antofagasta Twin Metals Minnesota (TMM) project in north eastern Minnesota, USA.
The Duluth Complex possibly contains the world’s largest undeveloped polymetallic resource containing nickel, copper, cobalt, platinum, palladium, gold and more. It is somewhat comparable in size to the Sudbury nickel complex in Canada, Norilsk in Russia and the Bushveld Compex in South Africa as massive bodies containing huge amounts of strategic metals, but these others are already being worked extensively. The Duluth Complex is believed to contain the world’s third largest nickel resource and the second largest concentration of copper and platinum group metals.
Duluth Metals with TMM is one of the biggest concession holders in the area, if not the biggest, having acquired Franconia in 2011, although PolyMet is perhaps more advanced towards production with the smaller, but still significant-sized, NorthMet project on another part of the Complex, while Teck is among other companies which are looking at other areas there. Duluth has already defined a huge NI 43-101 resource on its Maturi, Birch Lake and Spruce Road areas, and is primarily concentrating on the former for an initial mine.
PolyMet, which is effectively the first mover in trying to develop an open pit mine on the Complex, has recently announced that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources had announced that the 1,800-page NorthMet supplemental draft Environmental Impact Statement will be available for public review on November 22, 2013 when it will be published in the Federal Register. It will then be published in the Minnesota Environmental Quality Board Monitor in late November.
The supplemental draft EIS is being prepared by the DNR, the US Army Corps of Engineers and the US Forest Service. The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency is also actively involved in the process, leading into its role in permitting and environmental compliance.
Duluth has a joint venture on its proposed underground Twin Metals Minnesota (TMM) mining development project, based primarily on the three project areas noted above, with copper mining major Antofagasta plc under the joint venture company Twin Metals Minnesota LLC, which is 60% owned by Duluth and 40% by Antofagasta.
The TMM Project defined resource on its own is already reckoned to be amongst the world’s largest Cu-Ni-PGM PolyMetallic sulphide deposits with the latest estimate of contained metals (using a 0.3% Cu cut-off) of an Indicated 13.6 billion lbs copper, 4.4 billion lbs nickel, and 21.4 million oz palladium+platinum+gold (TPM – Total Precious Metals) and Inferred 11.9 billion lbs copper, 4.1 billion lbs nickel, and 12.8 million oz TPM.
For the rest of this article, click here: http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-base-metals?oid=203812&sn=Detail