SEAFLOOR COPPER-GOLD SULPHIDES
Nautilus Minerals Inc. has made another significant development in its sea floor massive sulphide exploration program with the world’s first commercial sea floor electromagnetic (EM) survey of copper-gold massive sulphide deposits. Fifty-two line-kilometres of EM data were recently acquired from a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) operating in 1,500-metre water depth at Nautilus’s Solwara 1 project, in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea.
Nautilus, together with its shareholder Teck Cominco Ltd., has partnered with the Vancouver-based Ocean Floor Geophysics Inc. to develop, deploy and protect the intellectual property associated with the deep-ocean electromagnetic technology.
Electromagnetic data have long been the geoscientist’s preferred geophysical technique for locating and mapping massive sulphide mineralization beneath the land. Now after solving the problems associated with inducing measurable fields from within the conductive sea-water environment Nautilus and its partners have shown the electromagnetic method can be used not only by airplane and helicopter over land, but also by ROV on the sea floor for the detection of massive sulphide systems.
The survey at Solwara 1 clearly showed an anomaly coincident with the mineralization tested by recent drilling confirming the effectiveness of the EM technique to detect the presence of massive sulphide systems on the sea floor. These EM data add value to the current diamond drilling program and the evaluation of future prospects by accurately delineating near-surface massive-sulphide boundaries.
David Heydon, Nautilus chief executive officer, commented: “Whilst the survey data are still being processed, Nautilus has already identified a series of EM anomalies that are peripheral to the area tested in this current drilling program opening up the potential for the discovery of further massive sulphide mineralization — potentially extending the main Solwara 1 zone. We plan to follow up these anomalies in our 2008 field program and with the success of this program, propose to conduct EM surveys over our other projects. Nautilus has identified eight Solwara projects to date.”
