Here is a third party report from Rockstone Research that mentions Equitas Resources.

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The discovery of the Voisey’s Bay Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Deposit in Labrador has been heralded as one of the most significant discoveries made in Canada in the last 30 years. Last month, Equitas Resources Corp. announced the start of a phase 1 drilling program on its Garland Property, some 30km southeast of the Voisey’s Bay Mine. As per yesterday’s news, 4 of 10 prospective anomalies have already been drill tested and assays are expected shortly. In the meantime, it may be worthwhile to look back at the initial discovery of Voisey’s Bay some 20 years ago. As Mark Twain said: “History never repeats itself but it often rhymes.”

Yesterday after market close, Equitas provided a drilling update. Approximately 1,515m have been drilled so far with 4 holes completed (379m per hole on average) at VTEM anomalies D, C, J and Q. A total of 173 core samples have been sent to an independent lab for analysis, with assays to be received shortly. The remaining 6 anomalies will be drill tested in the next weeks.

In addition to ongoing geophysical evaluations with Crone large loop PEM surveys over all VTEM anomalies, Equitas mentioned to conduct petrographic analysis on several samples from anomalies D and J, which gives the impression that the drills may have found something comparable to Voisey’s Bay. Follow-up drilling at both anomalies may be conducted once favorable assays have been received.

According to Equitas’ VP of Exploration, Everett Makela:

“We are satisfied with the progress of work completed to date, and await full results from the current program. Despite a very tough financing climate, Equitas is well-funded to execute on our plans to evaluate all anomalies identified on the Garland property.”

The following historic map from Diamond Fields Resources Inc. shows the location of Voisey’s Bay’s first 5 holes, drilled in October 1994 along an EM anomaly (highlighted in yellow). The shape of Voisey’s Bay’s EM anomaly appears similar to the line-up of VTEM anomalies C, Q, I, J, G, and H (“Southern Response Trend”, yellow in map below) on Equitas’ Garland Property:

According to Equitas’ press release of September 23, 2015:

“Twelve anomalies have now been identified and the Company has commenced drilling. The 2015 Phase 2 field program at the Garland project kicked off on August 23rd…

Despite being hampered by poor weather conditions limiting helicopter operations, significant progress has been made in the evaluation of conductivity anomalies detected by the VTEM survey flown in March. Further interpretation from final processing of the B-field Tau component of the VTEM data has resulted in three new conductive signatures being identified at O, P and Q. Tau anomalies can reflect more conductive bodies with slowly decaying signal, typical of large massive sulphide bodies.

Geological mapping and prospecting have been completed over all of the conductivity target areas except anomaly M. No possible sources for the underlying conductivity have been identified in the outcrops examined to date. This is not unexpected, considering the interpreted depths of the VTEM anomalies, significant overburden cover, and the exploration model that considers favourable target rocks to be overlain by younger ferrodiorite and ferrogranite intrusions.

A total of 39km of line-cutting has been completed over the anomalies. Large Loop PEM surveying by Crone Geophysics has been completed at anomalies A, B, C and Q. At anomalies A and B, the response signatures have been explained by highly magnetic lithologies coupled with low VTEM bird height, creating an apparent conductivity anomaly termed Super Para-Magnetic effect (SPM). These targets are of no further interest.

At anomaly C, surveying with Crone PEM resulted in the definition of a good quality E-W trending conductor, flat-lying with minimum core dimensions of 15m by 300m, occurring 70m below surface. Definition of this response helps to validate the interpreted Southern Response Trend (SRT), an multi-km E-W trending area of conductivity, magnetic and structural features straddling a large E-W offset of the Archean-Proterozoic suture, analogous in scale, morphology and setting to the Voisey’s Bay Intrusive Complex and related mineralization. This sparked the recent staking of license 023365M, consisting of a 132 claim block comprising 3,311 hectares, designed to cover the western extension of the SRT. Interpretation of the PEM data over the large conductive signature at Q is ongoing.

Springdale Forest Products have commenced drilling with borehole GP15-001. This NQ borehole is designed to test VTEM anomaly D, part of 2 km trend of variable conductivity, coincident with a Ni-Cu-Co lake sediment anomaly, and resident in an E-W structure of the Gardar-Voisey’s Bay Fault set. An update on drilling will be made available once all results have been compiled and interpreted.

Commenting on the results, VP Exploration Everett Makela stated:

“I am pleased with the progress of the Phase 2 campaign to date. After initial slow start-up due to poor weather conditions, we are executing our plan to fully test the conductivity responses this year. The three additional anomalies at O, P and Q increase our odds for success, and we are adjusting the program to accommodate exploration of these targets. Recent interpretation of the multi-km Southern Response Trend has led to a shift of exploration focus to this area. We will continue to provide updates on results as they become available”.
Historic share price of Diamond Fields Resources Inc. from “Inco Comes to Labrador”:

Current share price of Equitas Resources Corp. (click on charts for 15 min. delayed version):

Direct link to above chart (15 min. delayed): http://schrts.co/MqtYO4

Direct link to above chart (15 min. delayed): http://schrts.co/JagUKa

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Magmatic Sulfide Deposits

According to Professor Anthony J. Naldrett in “Magmatic Sulfide Deposits” (Springer 2004):

“In September 1993, Albert Chislett and Chris Verbiski – partners in a small exploration company called Archean Resources Ltd. – discovered significant nickel-copper-cobalt mineralization in a remote area of the Labrador coast at a point west of Voisey’s Bay. At the time, Archean Resources was under contract to Diamond Fields Resources Inc. and was prospecting for diamonds as well as sulfides. In mid-1994, Diamond Fields agreed to finance further exploration of the discovery site – a large iron-stained hill of gossan. Initial core drilling of the gossan later that year revealed a massive sulfide ore body more than 100 meters thick.

The Voisey’s Bay deposit is the largest base metal discovery in Canada in more than 30 years. The deposit is 35 kilometers southwest of the town of Nain and only 10 kilometers from a natural deep-water harbor. In 1994 and 1995, airborne geophysical surveys were conducted over 1,800 square kilometers of claims staked by Archean Resources and Diamond Fields. Drill crews initially focused on a large, strongly conductive anomaly located in an area riddled with sills and dikes. The anomaly is at least 7 kilometers in length.

The four discovery holes (VB-94-01 to 04) penetrated a thick east-west trending gabbroic dike containing disseminated, semi-massive, and massive sulfide mineralization. The best of the four holes (VB-94-02) intersected 71 meters of ore assaying 2.23% Ni, 1.47% Cu, and 0.123% Co.

Geophysical surveying in late 1994 revealed that the Voisey’s Bay anomaly widens to the east, where it takes on an ovoid shape. In January 1995, crews began drilling the ovoid feature and again intercepted massive sulfide. The mineralization at this point lies immediately below the overburden, permitting open pit mining. The principal ore minerals are pentlandite, chalcopyrite, and pyrrhotite.

The second drill hole (VB-95-07) to test the feature penetrated 104 meters of massive sulfide grading 3.93% Ni, 2.84% Cu, and 0.14% Co. More than 340 holes have been drilled on the property since the original discovery and several high-priority targets still have not been evaluated. The ore body has a wine-glass shape in section and is roughly 450 meters in length. In plan view, it is 300 meters wide at its thickest point.

Three separate zones have been identified to date: the Ovoid, the Eastern Deeps, and the Western Extension. The Ovoid zone has an estimated 31.7 million tons of ore averaging 2.83% Ni, 1.68% Cu, and 0.12% Co that is amenable to open pit mining. Preliminary drilling of the Eastern Deeps zone along a 1-kilometer traverse has identified an additional 50 million tons of resources at depth averaging 1.36% Ni, 0.67% Cu, and 0.09% Co. Limited drilling also delineated a new zone of high-grade mineralization in the Western Extension, but much more work was needed before this third resource could be satisfactorily estimated. Two other targets were being seriously investigated – the Sarah prospect 4 kilometers north of the discovery site and the Ashley prospect, 8 kilometers southwest of the Ovoid.”

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The Big Score: Chapter 5 “Discovery“

The following is an excerpt from the book “The Big Score: Robert Friedland, Inco, and the Voisey’s Bay Hustle” from Jacquie McNish in 1998.

“The first days of drilling at Voisey’s Bay were not happy ones. It was cold, hard work setting up the drill rig on the windswept hill. For four days the four-man drill crew battled frost and bitter winds to clear bush and build platforms for the drill rig. It was so cold that hoses froze when they pumped pond water down the hole to cool the drill head. While Chislet and Verbiski retired each night by helicopter to the comfort of a small lodge in Nain, their employees took shelter in a small tent sporadically warmed by a finicky propane heater.

Hole No. 1 on the western edge of the hill showed only marginally encouraging results. After a long day of drilling they had penetrated 40 metres below the surface but had drawn up only lengths of grey core with minute traces of minerals. Drilling for core samples is lonely, numbing work. Isolated in remote wilderness, drill crews work grueling twelve-hour shifts fighting nature and machinery to cut narrow pipes of rock from the earth. Yet their work is one of the most crucial steps in mineral exploration because the cores measure the thickness and richness of a deposit. Fortunes are made or lost on the basis of what diamond drillers and their helpers pull out of the ground. These days, most mining exploration drill rigs are operated by junior companies betting their last pennies on the hope that drill cores will confirm a hunch about mineral riches. A good assay from a drill core can send penny-stock prices to the moon; negative results send them into a tailspin. Money is usually scarce for exploration drilling, so skeleton crews are flown into the bush with rented rigs. This was the case at Voisey’s Bay.

The drill crew worked in two shifts, two men on, two off. The drilling of hole No. 2 began at the start of the 7 p.m. shift on October 21, with diamond driller Patrick Lyver and his helper, Doug Didham, manning the rig. Of the four, Lyver was the most experienced crew member at Voisey’s Bay, with more than thirty years of drilling experience under his belt. His savvy would be tested that night. The rig was about halfway down the eastern slope of the hill, a few metres above the spot where Verbiski’s VLF receiver had jammed. The first challenge was to cut through overburden, the gravel and soil that covers bedrock. Normally, drilling overburden is a straightforward task. Lengths of steel casing are slowly shoved into the overburden, forming a secure underground tunnel through loose rock. Once the drill head hits bedrock, drill rods are lowered through the casing to begin cutting core samples.

But hole No. 2 gave them trouble from the start. It was almost impossible to properly anchor the drill rig on the hillside. Every time the drill head hit an underground boulder, the rig jerked violently on its log platform. To make matters worse, the rented rig had half the horsepower normally used for mineral drilling. And the spot they had chosen for drill hole No. 2 was covered in nearly 20 metres of overburden. The machine jerked so much as it fought through the loose rock that two drill heads broke below the surface. Under the dim glow of a few battery-operated lights, Lyver twice had to pull out all the casing pipes to attached new drill heads and start again. By the time relief arrived at 7 a.m., the night shift had renamed the rig with some choice profanities.

The night crew’s replacement were two brothers from St. John’s, Johnny and Kevin Redmond. At 37, Johnny Redmond was a relative newcomer to mineral drilling. A short, muscular man with trim dark hair and a moustache, he had worked for twenty years in construction and on oil and gas drill rigs from the Grand Banks to British Columbia. Johnny had done some work on mineral drill before, but never to probe for diamonds and always as a helper to more experienced drillers, the hardy men who work with little shelter in the bush to drive diamond drill heads through dense rock. This was the first assignment without supervision. His helper was his younger brother Kevin, an electrical engineering student on his first drilling job.

For the first half-hour of their shift that morning, the Redmonds’ luck went little better than that of the night crew. The drill kept jamming, causing the rig to buck on its crude log platform. Fastened awkwardly at a 45-degree angle along a freezer-sized engine cabinet, the hydraulic drill was encased in a 4-metre tower. From afar it looked like a giant hypodermic needle. As it hammered the ground, the drill spilled a spreading halo of murky grey cooling water. Worried that he and his brother were not going to finish drilling on schedule that day, Redmond swore loudly at the heaving machine as it battled another unseen obstacle below the surface.

Half an hour after they started, Johnny noticed that the hydraulic pressure was dropping sharply on the feed gauge. They had hit bedrock. Redmond shut off the drill and the water pump. A few minutes later he lowered a drill rod with a new diamond head into the casing. Into the drill rod he lowered a 3-metre inner tube designed to hold rock core forced up through the hollow drill head. Redmond then switched the drill and water pump back on. The core drilling had begun. For the first few minutes the diamond driller kept his eye on the pressure gauges. Then he heard his brother shouting over the roar of the drill, “Look Johnny! Look at the hole!”

Redmond peered down the drill hole. The cooling water spurting from the hole had turned jet black. “What is it? Is it oil?” asked Kevin. Redmond had worked enough rigs to know it wasn’t petroleum, but he had never seen anything like this before. He stepped down from the platform and cupped his hand under the spray. It was water, but it was so black. He noticed fragments of freshly cut rock around the drill hole. The cuttings gleamed like polished brass. “We’re into something, Kevin,” he said, “but I don’t know what it is.”

The elder Redmond returned to the rig. Several minutes later he stalled the drill to lower the core lifter down the hole to pull out the first core sample. Once the lifter snagged the end of the inner tube, he pulled it out with the wire winch attached to the drill. When the inner tube popped up, Kevin unhooked it, eased it out of the drill tower and began pulling core from the tube.

“What the hell is this?” Kevin yelled. His older brother turned to look at the long pipe of freshly cut core. “It’s glowin’,” marvelled Johnny. “It looks like gold.” The brothers puzzled over the rock. They had been hired to drill for diamonds, but this looked nothing like precious stones. The core was a solid gleaming pipe of brassy-yellow rock. If it was gold it was worth a fortune. For the next few hours, the mysterious core was their secret. “Nobody knows about this but us, Kevin. Let’s show them our best stuff.” Lyver and Didham were asleep in the tent and Chislett and Verbiski weren’t due back from Nain for hours. The Redmond brothers were determined to impress their new employers by drilling out as much core as possible. At 11 a.m. a helicopter landed on a frozen bog near the eastern foot of the hill, and Chislett and Verbiski headed up toward hole No. 2. It was a cold clear day and a thin blanket of frost glistened on the hillside. As the two prospectors climbed up one of the grid lines, Verbiski suddenly stiffened. Trickling alongside the path was a small stream of black water. He bent over to examine it more closely. His training told him exactly what he was seeing. “They’ve hit sulphides,” he whooped. When the two men reached the drill rig they were panting from the mad dash uphill. Before them lay a surreal sight. To the right sat eight shallow pine boxes brimming with glistening core; to the left Johnny Redmond stood on the log platform cursing the cantankerous drill that had once again hammed underground. “He doesn’t know,” Chislett said quitly to Verbiski. The prospectors started to chuckle. Kevin waved his employers over to the core boxes. “Is this good?” he asked, pointing to gleaming core. “Oh, yes,” Verbiski said, nodding slowly. “This is real good.”

Ever since August, when the prospectors had learned from the Ottawa lab that rock samples from the hill contained traces of nickel, they had been researching the pewter-coloured mineral. They knew nickel was derived from pentlandite, that it usually formed in minute granules barely visible to the human eye, that mining companies made billions of dollars a year selling it for use in high-tech metal alloys, and that large concentrations of the mineral were so rare that mineable nickel discoveries came along maybe once a generation. The only time they had actually seen pentlandite was when Verbiski dusted off his old mineral sample kit from college, which included a core sample laced with pentlandite from Sudbury, home of one of the world’s richest nickel deposits. As they bent down to examine the boxes of new core, the prospectors went numb. They were looking at grey nuggets of pentlandite. Surrounding the pentlandite were fat brassy crystals of chalkopyrite, copper ore. In mining jargon this was “massive sulphides,” a rare form of rock made up almost exclusively of valuable sulphide minerals, a sight most prospectors could only dream of, a core rich in valuable minerals that could justify a mine and deliver huge fortunes to its owners.

“Shut her down!” Chislett screamed to Redmond. “This is going down in history.” Verbiski reached into his knapsack and pulled out a camera. “Take our picture, Johnny,” said Chislett. “We’re going on the cover of Northern Miner.” The first thing that flashed through Redmond’s mind was that the job was over. He was out of work again. He and his brother asked Chislett and Verbiski several times to explain what was in the core, but the prospectors wouldn’t tip their hands. “All we can say is that this is good,” Verbiski told the brothers. After a few minutes, the Redmonds turned the drill back on, while the prospectors began examining the sparkling rock. Massive sulphide cores filled eight boxes. There was more than 30 metres of the stuff. Verbiski tried to calculate their fortune. “There’s $10 million for us,” he said, pointing to one box. “There’s another $10 million over there, and another $10 million.” After a few minutes he gave up. It was too big to comprehend. He summed up his feelings when he recorded the day’s results in his field book. “Massive, massive, massive,” he wrote.”
Intrusive breccia in varied-textured sulfide matrix from the Ovoid Deposit, Voisey’s Bay (source):

Drill core from Voisey’s Bay (source):

Sulfidic gabbro (nickel ore; ~5.5cm across): Gabbro with intercumulate metallic sulfides (principally pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite, pentlandite) from the Voisey’s Bay Ni-Cu-Co Magmatic Sulfide Deposit. Economic mineralization at Voisey’s Bay is moderately complex, but in general consists of massive sulfide bodies surrounded by and sulfides disseminated in mafic intrusive igneous rocks (troctolites and gabbros). The key economic mineral in this deposit is pentlandite – a nickel iron sulfide. Other minerals are chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite, troilite, cubanite, and magnetite (source):

Figures below: Click to view source

 

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The Cu-Ni-Co Deposit at Voisey‘s Bay

The following is a summary of the genesis and discovery of the Voisey’s Bay Deposit (by Alan V. Morgan and Peter I. Russel from the Department of Earth Sciences, University of Waterloo, Ontaria, Canada).

“While prospecting in eastern Labrador in 1993, two Newfoundlanders, Albert Chislett and Chris Verbiski of Archean Resources, a small St. John’s based company, chipped samples from an iron stained rock outcrop. Within fifteen minutes of standing on the outcrop they realised that they had made a potentially significant mineral discovery. Results came quickly. In November 1994, Diamond Fields, the company that funded the prospectors, announced the discovery of a major nickel-copper-cobalt sulphide orebody, and by July 1995, drilling had defined 31.7 million tons of ore with a grade of 2.83% nickel, 1.68% copper and 0.12% cobalt. The province of Newfoundland was on its way to becoming an important producer of nickel, copper and cobalt.

The Geology of Eastern Labrador

Until the Voisey’s Bay discovery, it is probably true to say that the igneous rocks and high grade metamorphic rocks of eastern Labrador were not generally considered to be promising areas for base metal prospecting. Indeed, the same iron stained rocks had been sampled at least once before, in 1985, by geologists of the Newfoundland Department of Mines and Energy, in the course of a helicopter-supported survey of the area, but they were not encouraged by the low metal content of the weathered rocks exposed at surface.

Fig.1A: Regional geology of northern Labrador and the location of the Voisey‘s Bay deposit.

The sequence of geological events leading up to the formation of the ore deposit are illustrated in Figure 1. The plutonic igneous rocks that host the orebody were emplaced as magma deep in the crust, close to a linear zone where two ancient continents collided as the ocean basin between them closed. The collision of the continents occurred 1840 to 1860 million years ago, and as the continental crust to the west was thrust below the continent to the east, the sediments of the ancient ocean were pushed deep into the crust to be metamorphosed and folded. That zone of metamorphosed and folded rocks is now exposed at surface, by uplift and erosion, where it forms a belt of gneisses and plutonic igneous rocks known as the Torngat orogen.

Much later, between 1290 and 1340 million years ago, the crust at the Torngat orogen became active once more. This time the crust was under tension and started to pull apart and extend with the formation of steep faults, probably in response to a rising plume in the mantle underlying the crust (Figure 2). It was during this time that the magmas of the igneous rocks of the Nain Plutonic Suite were generated and emplaced into the crust; and it was during this time that the Voisey’s Bay orebody was formed.

Fig.1B-C: The emplacement of the igneous plutonic rocks associated with the Voisey‘s Bay deposit following the collision of the Churchill „continent“ in the west with the Nain „continent“ in the east, and the formation of the intervening Torngat orogen.

The two ancient continents, now welded together by the Torngat orogen, are distinguished by their different geological structures, reflecting separate structural histories. The eastern part of the ancient continent to the west is now known as the Churchill Structural Province, but only a sliver of the eastern continent remains, represented by the Nain Structural Province. The rest of the continent has since split off to form Greenland.

The Formation of the Orebody

The major copper-nickel deposits of the world are associated with igneous rocks that are formed by partial melting of the mantle (Figure 2). The most familiar, mantle-derived igneous rocks are the basalt volcanic flows of the ocean crust. When the same basalt magma is emplaced within the crust, rather than reaching the surface, it cools slowly, to form gabbro, the coarse grained equivalent of basalt. The host rock to the copper-nickel deposit at Voisey’s Bay is a type of gabbro.

Fig.2: The formation of mantle-derived magma.

Compared to other igneous rocks, such as granite, gabbros are dark coloured because they are high in iron and magnesium and low in silica (SiO2), and they also contain comparatively high nickel and copper, although these elements occur only in trace amounts (i.e measured in parts per million rather than percent). When the magma crystallizes, these small amounts of copper and nickel do not form discrete minerals, but are dispersed through the rock, hidden away in silicate minerals where they substitute for the more abundant elements such as magnesium and iron.

Mantle-derived magmas, however, have the potential to form a separate, immiscible magma or liquid of iron sulphide composition into which the small amounts of copper and nickel in the magma may be concentrated and eventually crystallize as discrete sulphide minerals. The iron-rich magmas are capable of dissolving significant amounts of sulphur. Sulphur dissolves in an igneous magma by displacing oxygen atoms from sites where the oxygen is comparatively weakly bonded to a cation. Oxygen bonded with Fe2+ is such a site. Thus only magmas with abundant ferrous iron are capable of taking sulphur into solution in significant amounts.

FeO (in solution) + 1/2S2 = FeS (in solution) + 1/2O2

Fig.3: Geological model for the formation of a Fe-Ni-Cu sulphide orebody.
A. Fe-rich, gabbroic, mantle-derived magma at the top of the mantle.
B. Magma rising through the crust passes through sulphur-rich, sedimentary rock unit; sulphur is dissolved in the gabbroic magma.
C. Magma, emplaced in the upper part of the crust, cools; sulphur comes out of solution as immiscible droplets of dense, iron sulphide liquid in the gabbro magma; droplets fall to the bottom, extracting Ni, Cu, and Co from the gabbro magma; crystallization produces a massive Fe-Ni-Cu sulphide orebody at the base of the intrusion overlain by disseminated sulphides.

One of the ways that the magma can pick up sulphur is by passing through sulphur-rich sediments in the crust (Figure 3). At Voisey’s Bay the necessary sulphur is found in the metamorphosed sedimentary rocks of the Torngat orogen. The amount of sulphur dissolved in the magma (only a few percentage by weight) depends on several factors, but one of the most important is the temperature of the magma. Thus as it cools, droplets of immiscible iron sulphide liquid appear in the gabbroic magma. These droplets are much more dense than the gabbroic magma, and they fall through the magma to accumulate at the bottom of the magma chamber as a pool of iron sulphide liquid. But as the sulphide droplets pass through the magma, they pick up or scavenge the trace metals that partition preferentially into sulphide liquid rather than the silicate magma; trace elements such as copper and nickel, but others such as cobalt, platinum and palladium, if present will also be concentrated in the sulphide liquid. The sulphide liquid will eventually cool and form sulphide minerals of the ore. At Voisey’s Bay the ore consists of, approximately : 75% pyrrhotite, FeS; 12% pent-landite, Fe,Ni9S8; 8% chalcopyrite, CuFeS2; and 5% magnetite Fe3). The last droplets of sulphide liquid that separated will be trapped by the crystallizing gabbroic magma as disseminated sulphide ore overlying the massive sulphides at the bottom of the magma chamber (Figures 3 and 4).

Fig.4: Model for the Voisey‘s Bay deposit (after Naldrett et al., 1996) The massive sulphides overlie a feeder dyke which is approximately horizontal where it enters the intrusion. It is probable that the immiscible sulphide liquid separated from the gabbroic magma as it was moving along a feeder dyke to its final location.

The Discovery Gossan

The red iron staining on the weathered rocks, which first attracted the prospectors, is referred to as a gossan by geologists. It is formed by the weathering and oxidation of iron sulphides which invariably occur in base metal ore deposits. In the course of weathering, the iron sulphides (pyrrhotite, FeS, at the Voisey’s Bay deposit) are oxidised to insoluble ferric oxy-hydroxides (approximated to Fe(OH)3 in the equation below), and it is this “rust” that gives the gossan its characteristic red colour.

FeS + 2O2 = Fe2+ = SO42-
Fe2+ + 1/4O2 + 5/2H2O = Fe(OH)3 + 2H+
(at low pH this reaction is speeded up by bacteria)

It takes only a comparatively small amount of iron sulphides in a rock to produce a strong red colour and consequently it is reasonably easy for a prospector to spot a gossan. But gossans must be examined very carefully. This is because, in the reaction shown above, hydrogen ions are produced, resulting in acidic waters. Such water will dissolve or leach the base metals in the deposit, leaving only a small amount of metal in a gossan that may have formed by the weathering of a metal-rich sulphide deposit. This was particularly important at Voisey’s Bay because at the discovery outcrop, gossan formation and metal leaching had penetrated to greater depths than would normally be expected under the cool climatic conditions of eastern Labrador.

The geologists working for the Geological Survey of Newfoundland and Labrador were discouraged by the low metal content of the gossan. The prospectors were more fortunate, maybe even a bit lucky, because they found fresh, unweathered rock comparatively close to surface, and, as was reported in an article in the Northern Miner, (May 15th 1995), they “could see stringers of chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) shooting through the gabbro.” They extrapolated what they saw in their samples to the dimensions of the gossan, approximately 500 m long and between 40 m and 80 m wide, and they knew that they were onto an important discovery. It has been estimated that the Voisey’s Bay Ni-Cu-Co deposit may contain 150 million tons of ore grade material (Financial Post, April 12, 1996). It is one of the most economically significant, geological discoveries in Canada in the last thirty years.

Further Reading

(1) Naldrett, A.J., Keats, H., Sparkes, K. and Moore, R. 1996. Geology of the Voisey’s Bay Ni-Cu-Co deposit, Labrador, Canada; Exploration and Mining Geology, Vol. 5, No. 2.
(2) Ryan, B., Wardle, R.J., Gower, C.F. and Nunn, G.A.G. 1995. Nickel-copper sulphide mineralisation in Labrador: The Voisey’s Bay discovery and its exploration implications; Current Research, Report 95-1, Geological Survey, Department of Natural Resources, Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.
(3) Ryan, Bruce. 1995. Geology of the Voisey Bay area, Labrador; The Gangue, G.A.C. Mineral Deposits Newsletter, Issue 48.”

 

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Voisey’s Bay – Newest Jewel in Inco’s Crown

The following is an excerpt from the February 2006 issue of the International Mining Magazine mentioning the potential of the Garland Lake area to host another Voisey’s Bay style deposit.

“The mineral resources [of the Voisey’s Bay Deposit] are contained within three deposits. The Eastern Deeps zone is part of but lies 1 km east of the Ovoid. Unlike the Ovoid, the Eastern Deeps mineralization begins about 500 m below the surface and extends to depths of 1,000 m. The Discovery Hill and Reid Brook deposits occur 1 km and 2 km west of the Ovoid, respectively. So eventually Voisey’s Bay may support both open pit and underground mines…

In October last year Inco spent C$400,000 to stake 6,884 claims in the Voisey’s Bay area. This is the most the company has ever spent in one staking spree. By the end of this year, complying with agreements with the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, Inco will have spent C$20 million in exploration of the Voisey’s Bay lease. Drilling at Reid Brook, for example, has returned core samples with Ni contents as high as 3%. Looking further into the future, there is the Garland Lake area, in which there is great interest.

Comparing this area, immediately to the south, with Voisey’s Bay, Inco’s VP of technical services, was quoted by the Globe & Mail last October: “There is some likelihood, and we’re pretty excited about it, of us finding a similar type deposit in that area.”

After Inco, Cornerstone is the second largest land holder in the Garland Lake area and recently conditionally agreed to Inco completing airborne gravity gradiometry surveys over its Garland project located 30 km southeast of Voisey’s Bay. The survey is part of a much larger survey being completed by Inco over its and other companies’ property holdings in this area. The survey is designed to explore for favourable troctolitic rocks similar to those which host the Voisey’s Bay deposits, and potentially has the capacity to directly detect large shallowly buried accumulations of massive sulphides akin to magmatic Ni-Cu-Co deposits at Voisey’s Bay. Inco completed a significant amount of staking in the Garland Lake area last year. The survey is planned to be completed in stages during the first half of 2006. Survey parameters have been chosen by Inco and include a gravity gradiometer, a gravimeter, a mag-netic gradiometer, and a LIDAR system…”

A few months after the above publication, Inco was taken over by Vale in a $17 billion transaction, whereafter its Labrador exploration plans were put on ice. Cornerstone Capital Resources Inc. re-focused exclusively on their Ecuadorean and Chilean projects as not having found anything significant on its 53 km2 Garland Lake Properties (located only a few km south of Equitas’ 283 km2 Garland Property!).

A few years after the above publication, VTEM+ geophysics, which Equitas used on its Garland Property in early 2015, were developed and are available to exploration companies since a few years only.

General geology map of the Nain Plutonic Suite and surrounding region showing magmatic sulphide occurrences and location of the Garland Lake Project (formerly held by Cornerstone) and the Garland Property (now Equitas). After Ryan and Kerr, 2000 (source).

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Company Details

Equitas Resources Corp.
1450 – 789 W Pender Street
Vancouver, BC, Canada V6C 1H2
Phone: +1 604 681 1568
Email: skingsley@equitasresources.com
www.equitasresources.com

Shares Issued & Outstanding: 75,473,294

Canadian Symbol (TSX.V): EQT
Current Price: $0.17 CAD (Oct. 20, 2015)
Market capitalization: $13 million CAD

German Symbol / WKN: T6UN / A12CWK
Current Price: €0.11 EUR (Oct. 20, 2015)
Market capitalization: €8 million EUR

About Equitas Resources Corp.

Equitas Resources Corp.’s objective is to create shareholder value through new mineral discoveries. With a strong management team in place and excellent strategic partners to support the company‘s success, Equitas is primed to execute its mandate to explore and make a discovery in a region which already has a major world renowned nickel mine in operation. The company’s strategy was to acquire projects that have historically been fragmented and unconsolidated. This was the case in the Voisey‘s Bay region and Equitas was able to consolidate a land position in the region which lead to the acquisition of the Garland Project, which sits approximately 30km from the famous Voisey‘s Bay Mine owned by Vale. Equitas has compiled an extensive data base on Garland and believes that there is a significant opportunity to build shareholder value. This is the first time this area has been consolidated under one owner. The property has never been drill tested and has only seen cursory surface work using outdated techniques. The exploration goal is to use new technological advancements and sound geological principles to validate management‘s theories for the property that can lead to a significant discovery.

Analyst Coverage

Research #6 “Equitas Starts Drilling and Triggers Buying Rush“ (September 24, 2015)

Research #5 “Kingsley Arrives at Equitas‘ Garland Base Camp“ (September 10, 2015)

Research #4 “Early Warning Report on Equitas Resources“ (September 2, 2015)

Research #3 “Beyond Our Wildest Dreams (Revisited)“ (June 26, 2015)

Research #2 “King & Makela Identify 9 Knock-Your-Socks-Off-Targets near Voisey`s Bay Nickel Mine“ (May 13, 2015)

Research #1 “Vale Vale! Ex-Vale‘s Principal Geologist and Chief Geophysicist on the Case to Answer the Multi-Billion-Dollar-Question“ (April 20, 2015)
Picture of the Garland Property: West along a Trans-Lithospheric Fault of the Gardar-Voisey’s Bay system:

Disclaimer: Please read the full disclaimer within the full research report as a PDF (here) because fundamental risks and conflicts of interest exist.