Key points
- Nautilus Minerals Inc. lodged 47 exploration licence applications covering 108,295 square kilometres of the Bismarck Sea in Papua New Guinea.
- The new applications, combined with existing granted titles and prior applications, give Nautilus rights to 122,309 square kilometres of prospective acreage offshore Papua New Guinea.
- Nautilus recently raised $68.5 million US, with an Anglo American PLC subsidiary contributing $25 million US under a collaboration agreement.
- At the Solwara 1 prospect, 88 surface sulphide samples averaged 15.5 grams per tonne gold and 10.8 per cent copper over a strike length of at least 1.3 kilometres.
Nautilus Minerals Inc., following a geological targeting program, has lodged 47 exploration licence applications covering prospective areas of the Bismarck sea in Papua New Guinea. These new applications cover a belt 800 kilometres long by up to 500 km across, being an area of 108,295 square kilometres which with the current granted Nautilus titles and previously lodged applications will provide Nautilus with rights to 122,309 square km of prospective acreage in offshore Papua New Guinea.
David Heydon comments that, “This strategic move by Nautilus is likely one of the biggest ground staking ever undertaken by a mining company.”
This is an exciting step with Nautilus using its first-mover advantage as the leader in the emerging sea floor mining space to secure an area about the size of Greece.
It is well known that on land that VMS deposits occur in clusters where a district like Bathurst or Noranda may have dozens of deposits totally hundreds of millions of tonnes of massive sulphide ore. Nautilus’s sea floor deposits have genetic similarities to VMS deposits and work on the Solwara prospects in Nautilus’s PNG tenements has already located a cluster of deposits. The Solwara 1 prospect covers a significant mineralized zone with a strike length of at least 1.3 km, where 88 surface sulphide samples averaged 15.5 grams per tonne Au, 10.8 per cent Cu (see news in Stockwatch on May 25, 2006). Sampling at Solwara 2 and Solwara 3 averaging 10.3 g/t Au and 22.1 per cent Zn from 68 samples and Solwara 4 prospect averaging 13.5 g/t Au, 23.2 per cent Zn and 11.3 per cent Cu from 28 samples (see news in Stockwatch on Sept. 5, 2006) have demonstrated that these high-grade mineralized systems occur in a zone at least 250 km long.
Nautilus has recently raised $68.5-million (U.S.) with an Anglo American PLC subsidiary taking $25-million (U.S.) and entering into a collaboration agreement (see news in Stockwatch on Oct. 30, 2006) providing the company with the financial and technical resources to mount an aggressive exploration program over this vast prospective region.
