One of the most attractive places in the world for large copper/gold porphyry systems was in British Columbia (B.C.) Canada. There was enormous exploration work and discoveries in the 1950s to the early 1970s period until a change in the provincial political situation made the province far less attractive. The depressed metal prices of the 1990s just made a bad situation worse.
However, in recent years there has been a huge change. There is a new provincial government and mining exploration and development is welcome again. Combine this with high copper and gold prices and B.C. mining is booming again. Another key advantage, B.C. has cheap power, so you can mine lower grade copper at a better profit than almost anywhere in the world.
This has not gone unnoticed by mining companies and investors.
Taseko, TSX:TKO has recently more than doubled in price and now has a market cap of about $240 million.
Taseko's Gibraltar Mine in B.C. produces copper at about 0.27% copper and 0.076 lbs per ton moly (recovered in concentrate). Taseko Mines' Fish Lake Prosperity deposit also in B.C. has 491 million tons of 0.22% Cu and 0.43 gpt gold. Imperial Metals TSX:III also has a market cap of over $210 million. Imperial has 100% interest in the producing Mount Polley open pit copper/gold mine in central B. C., and a 50% interest in the Huckleberry open pit copper/molybdenum mine in northern B.C.
Junior exploration stocks focused in B.C. have seen their stock prices surge on good exploration results. Pioneer Metals, TSXV:PSM has seen its stock price surge in recent months, since acquiring more ground at their Fish Lake project, a copper-gold porphyry prospect adjacent to Taseko's Prosperity Gold-Copper Project. PSM has a market cap of about $33 million
SkyGold Ventures and Wildrose have soared on good drill news on their Spanish Mountain, Skygold has moved from around $0.50 to $1.50 and Wildrose from $0.40 to $1.30
I believe Fjordland Exploration will be the next one to pop in price
Fjordland Exploration ........ TSXV:FEX, Pinks:FEXXF ...... Recent Price
- $C0.38
52 week trading range $0.10 to $0.49
Shares Issued: 37.2 million
Fully Diluted: 48.4 million
Imperial Metals is a major shareholder with a $500,000 placement in July 2004 based on 2004 drill discovery
Management/Insiders own approx. 20%
Richard C. Atkinson, P.Eng. Director is a mining engineer and mineral exploration executive with over thirty years experience managing and directing junior exploration companies across North America. In 1986 he led a group of investors in the purchase of the mineral exploration inventory of the Canadian subsidiary of the Getty Oil Company along with the Getty name for $10 million. Two years later, Getty Resources Ltd. was acquired by a major resource company, returning a total of $140 million to Getty shareholders.
Peter Krag-Hansen Director, Prior to joining Fjordland, Mr. Krag-Hansen was a Senior Vice President and Director of Canaccord Capital Corporation, the largest independent investment firm in Canada. He has over 20 years of experience in the securities field.
The 35 square kilometre Woodjam Property is located in the Cariboo Region of B.C. about 50 kilometres east of the City of Williams Lake and 7 kilometres south of the village of Horsefly. The claims lie in low elevation, relatively flat terraine and is easily road accessible and workable on a year-round basis.
The property is close to Imperial Metals' Mount Polley gold-copper porphyry deposits and mine-site, located just 35 km northwest
Woodjam is the company's most advanced project in terms of exploration completed and mineralization discovered to date. Geologically modeled as a porphyry type of deposit, the focus is large tonnage, gold-copper ore body.
Mineralization at Woodjam is modelled after Northgate Mineral Corp.'s Kemess deposit in Northern British Columbia and Newcrest Mining's Cadia Hill deposit in Australia. Kemess commenced production in 1999, with a resource of 200 million tonnes grading 0.63 gram per tonne gold and 0.22 per cent copper, while Cadia Hill commenced production in 1996, with a resource of 210 million tonnes grading 0.72 gram per tonne gold and 0.18 per cent copper.
Prior to Fjordland's involvement, three copper mineralized zones: Megabuck, Takom and Spellbound were identified. Work by Fjordland has mainly focused on the the Megabuck Zone where potential for a large mineralized system is indicated by trenching and drill intersections. The significance of this property is that potentially economic gold grades have already been intersected by diamond drilling over considerable widths in the Megabuck Zone.
An Induced Polarization Survey was conducted by Fjordland in the vicinity of the Megabuck Zone in 2001. An exploration program, consisting of follow-up diamond drilling, was completed in October 2002
The 2003 follow-up soil geochemistry surveys combined with prospecting resulted in the discovery of a new zone, east of the Megabuck Zone An additional three diamond drill holes were drilled between the Megabuck and the new zone (News Release: 12-10-03). The second (hole number 03-30) of three diamond drill holes intersected 15.4 metres of mineralization grading 0.90% copper and 0.04 g/t gold. The intercept is considered an important discovery, as it may represent an extension of the known mineralization or a new zone altogether.
In the summer of 2004, a drill discovery extended mineralization at depth which included an interval of 275 metres (1,184feet) grading 1.04 g/t gold and 0.14% copper. If this kind of news came out in today's market, I think we would see a big pop in the stock.
Fjordland put out news with an update on the current drill program that started the end of February. Seven diamond drill holes were just completed, totalling 2,578 metres and drill results are expected to be available around the end of April. A second phase large-scale drill program is planned to start in July following a review of analytical and geologic data from the latest drilling.
Within the prolific Walker Lane Gold-Silver Belt that straddles the Nevada and California border, Fjordland has 100% earnin interests in four properties, prospective for highgrade (bonanza) gold-silver vein deposits.
Bald Peak Mineral County, Nevada
Blackrock Lyon County, Nevada
Star City Mono County, California
Wheeler Peak Mono County, California
FEX has no debt and just raised $375,000 at $0.20. I expect they will have to raise more money for the next drill program. If drill results come back good, as I expect, they should be able to raise money at higher prices.
FEX has some good properties in the Walker Lane Gold-Silver Belt, but the focus right now is the Woodjam in B.C.
They have already seen some excellent results in 2004, but these came at a time when the market was not paying much attention to these copper-gold porphyrys in B.C. With 7 drill holes just completed, I expect that FEX will be able to duplicate the 2004 good results and we should see a considerable move in the stock.
Although the stock has moved up from the $0.20 level in the past month, it is still cheap. The market cap is currently a mere C$13 million, cheap compared to similar juniors
Skygold and Wildrose moved on news in January of a 109.5 metre drill intersect of 1.12 grams per tonne gold.
I expect that FEX could do much better considering their 2004 intersect was over twice the length.
It would not be unreasonable to see FEX double in price, giving it a market cap of about $26 million, more in line with comparable juniors.
Contact, John Gomez 1-604-687-2153
http://www.stockhouse.com/comp_info.asp?symbol=FEX&table=LIST
Website
- http://www.fjordlandex.com
Resource/Tech Report - V12 #4.0, - FEX, SAN - Apr. 11, 2006
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