INTERVIEW: Balmoral CEO on high-grade nickel hit – by Kip Keen (Mineweb.com – May 21, 2014)

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Balmoral Resources CEO Darin Wagner describes plans to explore a newly discovered semi-massive sulphide zone on its Grasset project in Quebec.

HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) – Much remains to be seen about the potential of Balmoral Resources’ Grasset nickel-copper-PGE project in Quebec on the Detour gold trend. But its latest intercept certainly catches the eye with 45 metres @ 1.79 percent nickel, plus some copper and platinum group elements, in a new zone of mineralization that is little tested.

The question now becomes if there’s more of that to be had in the new zone. To get a sense of the project and its prospects we spoke with Darin Wagner, Balmoral Resources President and CEO, a few hours after it released the latest Grasset assays.

KIP KEEN: Tell me about the intercept and its implications.

DARIN WAGNER: In the intercept this morning basically there’s 77 metres of mineralization there. But the core of it is 45 metres at 1.79% nickel long with copper and PGE credits. That is contained in a specific horizon, which we’re referring to as Horizon 3, and it’s actually net-textured. So semi-massive sulphides that are well disseminated through the core and have a beautiful internal consistency to it.

It has all the hallmarks of a true magmatic system similar to, in the Canadian context, things we see at Raglan, and then also things like Sirius down in Australia, which is topical (as a recent discovery). That style of mineralization. It has all those characteristics.

In finding this new horizon – same old story – we backed up to drill test the first two that we had earlier discovered and got into this new one (see drill section below). The intrusion is quite long. It’s 16-plus kilometres. It’s barely drill tested. And all the geophysics we have is confined to the southern kilometre and a bit.

All the responses run outside that. So it looks like the system has got some really good strike extent here. And you’re early days, you’re 10 holes into it, but to get these kinds of widths and the style of mineralization and especially the high grades in the massive sections is really quite impressive.

KK: It’s early yet as you mentioned. Are you hopeful Horizon 3 can grow and can you garner any clues so far about whether the host rock or mineralization can grow or not? You don’t have a whole lot of outcrop to go by.

DW: No, we got a whole lot of dirt on top of it. But the two lower horizons (which like Horizon 3 are steeply dipping and strike northwest-southeast, but with lesser grades so far) show continuity. One, we’ve intersected over 800 metres of strike and vertically down to 300. So there’s no reason to suggest the horizon won’t show strong continuity (mineralization is another open question). Given the thicknesses and style of mineralization – the consistency through the intercept – I’m fairly comfortable saying it’s certainly got fairly good growth potential in the near term. We’ll get the drills turned back on in about three weeks time.

For the rest of this interview, click here: http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/content/en/mineweb-exploration?oid=241829&sn=Detail