Pacific North West Capital Corp fka PFN

[sumisu]

Pacific North West Capital Goes Back To Its Roots

May 16, 2007

http://www.pfncapital.com/s/Articles.asp?ReportID=187647

By Minesite Canadian Correspondent

Harry Barr and his team at Canadian listed Pacific North West Capital are making an aggressive push to add value beyond its 50 per cent stake in a plus 1 million ounce palladium resource at the River Valley project and investors are starting to take notice.

Never one to shy away from an emerging area play, Harry's latest move has Pacific North West picking up a number of new nickel projects in and around the Winter Lake area of Canada's Northwest Territories. This is the region that sparked a lot of investor interest last month when fellow junior GGL Diamonds reported that it had found nickel, while exploring for diamonds. Yes, reminiscent of the gigantic Voiseys' Bay nickel find by Diamond Fields in the 1990s. The news caused GGL stock to soar from C$0.13 per share to an intraday high of C$1.50. Of course, common sense has since prevailed and GGL shares now fetch around C$0.53. That said, the very early staged discovery of nickel mineralization grading only 0.4% lies within an extensive belt of rocks previously identified by a mapping project funded by the Geological Survey of Canada and reported as having the potential for hosting magmatic nickel mineralization.

The belt, named the Winter Lake Supracrustal Belt, includes large volumes of mafic and ultramafic rocks, dated as being 2.7 billion years old and including tholeiitic basalts, komatiites, serpentinized peridotite, and gabbro intrusions. In other words, the same age and same types as many of the world's sulphide nickel resources including Thompson Nickel Belt of Manitoba, the Raglan belt in northernmost Quebec, the Kambalda deposit in Western Australia, and Hunter's Road in Zimbabwe.

"GGL's technical team should be credited with identifying what may be one of the first new nickel areas since the discovery of Voisey's Bay," says Harry. "Management is excited about being involved in the beginning of what appears to be one of the first new base metal staking rushes in recent times in the North West Territories."

Pacific North West is now just finalizing its budget for the project, which is expected to include airborne and ground geophysical surveys aimed at defining potential target areas for nickel mineralization. Just as importantly for shareholders, Pacific North West is positioned should the area really heat up this summer.

A much shorter match stick to potentially light a fire under Pacific North West's share price is a 2,000 metre drill program now underway on the West Timmins nickel project. The company's partner on the project, Xstrata Nickel recently completed deep drill testing it's adjoining Montcalm mine property, which hosts an estimated 4.2 million tonnes grading 1.45% nickel and 0.69% copper are in the measured category and are expected to support a mine life of approximately 8.5 years. The drill program with test geophysical conductors to depths of 200 metres south of the Montcalm Mine claims. Pacific North West can earn 100 per cent of the project by spending C$4 million over a 4 year period but Xstrata retains a 2% net smelter royalty and also has the right to earn back a 65 per cent stake, by either completing a feasibility study or spending $20 million on a feasibility study, whichever occurs first. So if lightening strikes, the major is covered.

News is also starting to flow from Pacific North West's platinum reconnaissance program in Quebec. Last year, Pacific North West teamed up with SOQUEM, a subsidiary of Société Générale de Financement du Québec, to identify and explore for platinum properties in the province. Work on the Taureau Project identify PGM mineralization in mafic intrusive bodies with two samples returning assays averaging 1.17grams palladium per tonne, 0.14 gram platinum per tonne, 0.29gram gold per tonne, 1.62% copper and 0.35% nickel. Clearly early days but a nice start. According to Harry; "Our partnership with SOQUEM is advancing on schedule. Grassroots exploration conducted in 2006 should provide us with drill ready targets over the next few months. The technical expertise of our partner SOQUEM is unmatched."

While this new exploration activity has prompting renewed interest from investors, Pacific North West Capital in partnership with Anglo Platinum is not about to back away from their flagship River Valley project in Ontario. Little wonder given that Anglo has already committed over C$19 million and can take its interest up to 60 per cent by providing a feasibility study and earn an additional 5 per cent by providing production financing.

It is not that River Valley has failed to deliver results over the years; it is just that investors have grown impatient. Last year's Phase 9A program cut a new style of PGM mineralization, the type comparable to the Bushveld Complex of Southern Africa. This kept Anglo in the hunt and also attracted the interest of Stillwater Mining, the largest primary producer of platinum group metals outside South Africa and Russia. Stillwater invested C$2 million in Pacific North West. But after nearly a decade of exploration results out of River Valley without news of mine development, shareholders just yawned at the recent developments. Still with a current measured and indicated resources marking 953,900 ounces of palladium, 329,500 ounces of platinum and 59,500 ounces of gold, one good drill hole could well put the play back on the map of investors.

For its part, Stillwater has gone on to ink a deal on Pacific North West's Goodnews Bay platinum project in Alaska and the producer will also fund reconnaissance on Pacific North West's other Alaskan projects. To earn an initial 50 per cent, Stillwater must fund US$4 million in exploration.

All this action is reminiscent of Pacific North West's early days when the company used top notch technical expertise to uncover hidden gems and then farm them up to bigger companies with deeper pockets. After all that is how River Valley started and the initial results made Pacific North West a market darling, albeit only for a short period of time. Some investors are already taking notice of the similarities as shares in the company have hit 52-week highs of C$0.52, up from C$0.27 at the start of the year. Pacific North West says that it committed to acquire new PGM and base metal projects, as well as working up the current ones. The promise of diversified news flow makes Pacific North West a company well worth watching in the second half of 2007.