Blue River Tantalum and Niobium Project
Overview
The Blue River Project is located in east-central British Columbia, Canada on provincial Hwy # 5 about 230 km north of Kamloops. The closest town is Blue River, B.C. which is near the south end of the property. The western part of the property is accessible by forestry roads (4-wheel drive) from the highway. The eastern part is accessible by helicopter. The main CN rail line and a high voltage power line cross the property along the North Thompson River.
Commerce Resources Corp. staked an initial claim block around the historic Verity and Fir showings in early 2000. By 2006 additions to the property resulted in a contiguous holding from Bone Creek in the south to Moonbeam Creek in the north. This was expanded south of the town of Blue River in 2007, with several peripheral claims added through to 2010.
Geological work and drilling supervision has been conducted by Dahrouge Geological Consulting Ltd. (DGC) of Edmonton, Alberta. Work has included: surface mapping; trenching and access construction; soil, rock chip, grab and channel sampling; core drilling; mineralogy; bulk sampling; metallurgical testwork; environmental baseline studies and conceptual mining and other engineering studies.
Initial mapping, soil sampling and drilling focused on the Verity and Fir carbonatites. Resources were estimated for both of these deposits which are now considered to be historic in conformance with National Instrument 43-101.
The Upper Fir carbonatite was discovered at the end of the 2002 season and drilled initially in 2005. From 2006 until 2011, drilling totalling nearly 60,000 m focussed mainly on the Upper Fir carbonatite, proceeding through four resource estimates. The most recent technical report by Amec Foster Wheeler has an effective date of March 18, 2015 and is discussed below.
The Fir, Upper Fir and Bone Creek carbonatites are now believed to be a single system of carbonatite sills or dikes metamorphosed to upper amphibolite facies and subjected to recumbent isoclinal folding and thickening, and subsequent faulting.
Regional prospecting, mapping, an extensive stream pan concentrate survey and several square kilometres of soil grids have been successful in identifying or confirming over twenty-five carbonatites on the property. In addition to the Fir and Verity carbonatites, both of which remain open in two directions, the Mt. Cheadle and Mud Lake targets are considered of significant potential.
To date Commerce has spent over $30M exploring the Blue River Project.
Mineral Resource Statement
The Mineral Resources stated in this report are unchanged from those reported in June 2013. The Mineral Resources are summarized below and are constrained within an underground mining shape prepared using the economic assumptions in the footnotes below. :
Blue River Project Estimated Mineral Resource (Effective Date 18 March 2015, Greg Kulla P.Geo)
|
Ta price [US$/kg] |
|
Confidence
|
Tonnes |
Ta2O5 [ppm] |
Nb2O5 [ppm] |
Contained Ta2O5 [1000s of kg] |
Contained Nb2O5 [1000s of kg] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
381 |
Indicated |
48,410,000 |
197 |
1,610 |
9,560 |
77,810 |
|
|
Inferred |
5,400,000 |
191 |
1,760 |
1,000 |
9,600 |
Notes:
- Assumptions include commodity prices of US$381/kg Ta, US$46/kg Nb, process recoveries of 65.4% for Ta2O5 and 68.2% for Nb2O5, US$27/tonne bulk mining cost and US$48/tonne selective mining cost, US$15/tonne process and refining cost, US$3/tonne G&A cost
- Mineral resources are amenable to underground mining methods and have been constrained to a mineable shape using a “Stope Analyzer”
- An economic cut-off was based on the estimated operating costs assuming either the bulk or selective mining method. The block unit value cut-off was either US$45/t (bulk) or US$66/t (selective)
- No allowances were made for mining losses or external dilution; planned internal dilution within the minimum stope size is included
- In situ contained oxide reported. Discrepancies in contained oxide values are due to rounding.
