The Long Range property, located 64 kilometres to the southwest of Buchans, covers 381,500 hectares (381.5 km2) and is held as a 50/50 joint venture between Buchans Minerals and Benton Resources, with Buchans Minerals as the operator. The exploration philosophy at Long Range is centered around the potential for discovery of a magmatic nickel sulphide deposit broadly analogous to Vale Inco’s Voisey’s Bay mine in Labrador and Kennecott’s Eagle deposit currently being developed in northern Michigan
An airborne geophysical survey flown over the initial property in 2008 detected a number of anomalies in prospective gabbro. Follow up work ultimately resulted in the discovery of the Portage Nickel prospect and the Range Copper prospect highlighted below. Additional Frontier Exploration is ongoing to identify new prospects in this highly prospective and un-explored region of Newfoundland.
Portage Prospect
Following the discovery of the Portage prospect in 2009, trenching returned bedrock grab samples assaying up to 2.70% nickel, 0.58% copper and 0.24% cobalt, as well as sawed channel samples averaging 0.99% nickel, 0.22% copper and 0.05% cobalt over 3.0 metres (including 2.18% nickel, 0.19% copper and 0.11% cobalt over 1.0 metre). Limited shallow drilling in 2009 also intersected several sections of mineralized gabbro, including a section assaying 1.36% nickel, 0.36% copper and 0.039% cobalt over a 1 metre core length.
As of June 17th, 2010, advanced exploration of the Portage Nickel discovery has two goals, the first is to identify conductive targets at depth by conducting ground-based deep-seeking time domain electromagnetic survey and secondly, to continue trenching and/or shallow drilling to expand the previous open ended discovery of nickel-copper sulphides at surface. A 70 line kilometre electromagnetic survey is currently in progress and anticipated to be complete by the end of June. The survey is designed to detect highly conductive targets potentially associated with large massive sulphide accumulations that may occur beneath detection limits of the Companies’ previous airborne surveys conducted over the area in 2008.Depending on results, the Companies hope to test targets generated by the survey with diamond drilling later this summer. The Companies will also undertake additional trenching this summer to further expose and expand the limits of nickel-copper mineralization discovered at the Portage nickel discovery in 2009.
Range Prospect
Following the identification of the Range prospect using airborne geophysics, follow up work resulted in the discovery of a new copper mineralized zone outside of the known gabbro where a two hole drill program testing a strong airborne geophysical anomaly returned a 37.80 metre intercept of banded, semi-massive to massive sulphides averaging 0.39% copper and 0.032% cobalt over an estimated true width of 29.11 metres. A four hole follow-up program encountered difficulties with terrain and was unable to intersect the target zone. Further ground geophysics and drilling are recommended for the upcoming winter period when access to the ice over the adjacent lake will provide better angles to effectively drill test the anomaly.
2010 Frontier Exploration
The 2010 Long Range exploration program was focussed on two areas of activity, the first being the more advanced exploration on the Portage nickel discovery, described above, and the second being frontier airborne geophysics and follow-up prospecting over the newly acquired claims recently incorporated into the Long Range property. As of June 17th, 2010, the frontier airborne geophysical surveys over the newly acquired claims was completed with results anticipated to be available in August 2010. Once received, data will be reviewed to select targets for immediate follow-up by ground prospecting. Areas surveyed by the 1,400 line kilometre Fugro HELITEM® airborne surveys include several properties underlain by unexplored gabbro bodies recently recognized to be prospective for magmatic nickel-copper sulphide deposits. Depending on results, it is hoped that the prospecting activities will help evaluate targets for further work including testing by diamond drilling.