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Commerce Resources Continues Expanding and Building Blue River Resources
Tantalum and Niobium. Two mysterious sounding metals to be sure, but what is not a mystery is the global shortage of supply for both metals. With few late stage exploration projects on the horizon for either metal, and increased demand due to technological applications such as cell phones and specialized steels, Commerce Resources (TSXV: CCE) continues to push toward feasibility on its Blue River project in British Columbia. Chris Grove, the Director of Corporate Communications for Commerce Resources, explains what’s tantalizing about the company’s prospects.
Resource Intelligence: Lets talk about your Blue River property in central BC. What you’re looking for is niobium and tantalum. First of all, why are these metals important not just to your shareholders, but to the world in general?
Chris Grove: Commerce Resources’ economics are largely driven by the tantalum values on the project. Tantalum is essential for the continued manufacturing and design of virtually all electronics. That history goes back to the introduction of the first mobile phone by Motorola in early 1980—the brick that weighed about 3 lbs. In the subsequent drive by Motorola and other electronics companies towards miniaturization, there was a scouring of the periodic table to find minerals and metals that would allow for much smaller components. Tantalum, number 73 on the periodic table, became a big part of the solution and has quietly revolutionized the electronics industry.
Niobium has some fascinating applications as well. There is no other substance that is able to do what niobium is able to do. In the making of steel, a very low percentage of niobium actually makes the steel up to 3 times stronger. There is a significant upward swing on Niobium right now within the steel industry as part of the stimulus packages in the US and China, in the construction of buildings and bridges. Niobium goes into the chassis of cars, because it makes for a stronger steel product, and that steel product can actually then be made thinner or lighter to improve fuel efficiency, too.
RI: You have a number of carbonatites at Blue River and this is essential to your success. Can you explain why?
CG: A carbonatite is a volcanic deposit and there are only about 500 known carbonatites on the planet. A very high percentage of these carbonatites are mineralized and many have gone into production as mines. Most of the world’s REE deposits are carbonatites. All of the worlds best niobium deposits are carbonatites, so in that regard we would be comparable to the world-class deposits of niobium albeit with this additional high-grade tantalum. On our claims there is an abundance of carbonatites and so far we’ve identified about 30 carbonatite showings across our 1,000 sq. km land holdings. We’ve only drilled 5 of them, so far.
RI: Meantime, you’ve actually proven three ore bodies on the project with resource estimates and these are called Fir, Upper Fir and Verity, and they are located quite close to one another.
CG: They are, however the Verity project is about 10 km north of the Fir and the Upper Fir projects. The Fir, which has about 12 million tonnes of carbonatite in the indicated and inferred categories, is ideally situated by the railway. In our exploration program in 2005, we discovered Upper Fir up the side of the hill from Fir, so that’s named appropriately. About 90% of our work since the fall of 2005 has been concentrated on this Upper Fir deposit.
RI: What makes Upper Fir so attractive?
CG: The Upper Fir has higher grades of both tantalum and niobium and is open pittable. The infrastructure there is outstanding, with logging roads already in place. We have drilled 175 holes on Upper Fir in the last four years. Additionally, we learned in 2008 drilling that the Upper Fir also has about twelve high-grade layers that are more greatly enriched with tantalum and niobium. So now we’ve focused developing this part of the resources, which could turn this from an open pit deposit to a room and pillar operation. We should be able to start mining straight into the side of the mountain, targeting these high-grade layers.
RI: Lets talk about tonnages. Investors can see all your updated resource info easily at www.shareknow.net and by searching for Commerce Resources. The Upper Fir deposit has 7.7 million pounds plus 3.5 million pounds tantalum in the inferred and indicated categories respectively, with the 175 gram per tonne cut off. Then you add the niobium, which is 44.4 million pounds plus 19.5 million pounds inferred and indicated respectively. And these are high-grade deposits, too, which means a smaller footprint and possibly faster, cheaper extraction costs. Right now it is essential for you to upgrade these categories. How quickly can you upgrade these resources from inferred to indicated?
CG: The author of the new 43-101 on the Upper Fir expressed a very high degree of confidence that with just a few infill holes we will be able to take the inferred resource tonnage into the indicated category and that is one of our goals this coming year.
RI: How much drilling have you done altogether?
CG: The Upper Fir we’ve done 175 holes. We’ve drilled fifteen holes on the Fir and five holes on the Verity.
RI: What kind of permits are required to move this project past feasibility?
CG: Once we’ve got positive economics in the feasibility study, then we would be applying for a mining license in British Columbia. We had the two previous Minister of Mines up to our property in September 2008. As well, we would need to have our environmental impact certificate for the project. In terms of that we took the somewhat bold move of dedicating almost 50% of our treasury in 2006 to contracting out the task of collecting the required environmental baseline data. At this point, we have collected this environmental data for over 40 months so far and we will continue collecting that until we submit our feasibility study and our application to become a mine.
RI: You recently put out a press release talking about your Eldor project in Quebec. Quebec is one of the best mining jurisdictions in the world. You are doing reconnaissance work here, but you are also expanding that work right now. What are you finding?
CG: The Eldor project is fascinating. One of our more experienced geologists directed us to the Eldor because he believed it to be potentially one of the richest polymetallic deposits he had ever seen. We did a sampling program in 2007 and followed that up with more exploration in 2008 as well as a 26 hole drill program from which we got great tantalum, niobium, uranium, phosphate and fluorite results. We then followed this work up in 2009 with a program directed to the REE prospective areas.
What we’re finding here is some high-grade REE mineralization in outcropping over a fairly broad area. We collected 70 rock samples as a follow-up to the discovery made during the 2009 summer exploration program. A high value of 2.74% REE was returned from exposed outcrop, with values in excess of 1% REE representing over 55% of the total rock samples collected.
Given the success of the reconnaissance work at Eldor, we intend to significantly expand the scope of exploration this year.
We are also very excited about the Carbo claims, in BC. They are also in the Rocky Mountain rare metal belt. We’ve had these claims for a long time but really got a boost of confidence last fall when Spectrum Mining, a private company, drilled their carbonatites, which are contiguous with our claims. They got drill assays back averaging about 3% rare earth elements. That was spectacular news for them and arguably spectacular news for Commerce Resources and our JV partner Canadian International Minerals.
RI: How should investors evaluate Commerce Resources?
CG: I would ask investors to evaluate Commerce Resources on the ground of it being one of the only late-stage tantalum exploration projects in the world. Investors also should consider that there is at least an 80% supply side deficit of ethically produced tantalum at this point in time. The ongoing loss of life and human rights abuses that have been going on for over twelve years in the DRC are basically financed by the extraction and sale of conflict minerals—and tantalum is one of the most valuable of those conflict minerals.
RI: It sounds like the tantalum story is under-appreciated.
CG: Absolutely. Most investors aren’t aware of the fundamentals for tantalum or niobium. Particularly in the case of tantalum, demand has been growing at about 5% per year since 1991. Tantalum values are currently at US$60/lb for concentrate and $140/lb as tantalum oxide.
Meanwhile, supply side events compound this situation, with the potential of further pushing up the price for tantalum. Several of the world’s major tantalum producers have ceased production. Within the past 13 months, Talison Minerals of Australia, Noventa from Mozambique, and Tanco in Canada have all ceased production—these companies supplied at least 45% of the world market.
So, we believe that with our high-grades and potential for very high recovery rates, plus the solid infrastructure near our deposits, we will be first to market with an exceptional product in high demand. And for our investors, that spells upside.
Milestones:
* Filing of Technical Report for updated 43-101 resource estimate on SEDAR
* AMEC to start preliminary economic assessment (scoping study)
* Continuation of metallurgical work and definition of preliminary flow-sheet
* Additional infill and step-out drilling
About the Author
UberVice LIVE at the Blue Note – Columbia, MO
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