A mine named Betty French
rare metals: She found them half a century ago
Paul Luke, The Province
Sunday, December 02, 2007
On a spring day in the 1950s, Betty French was checking a beaver trap near the village of Blue River when she spotted a volcanic rock that looked out of place.
The young prospector decided to try to trace the rock back to the outcrop from where it had likely rolled down to the banks of the North Thompson.
She climbed a steep patch, eyes swivelling over the ground, and spotted the rock's home. It was a carbonatite -- a rare volcanic body that can host a slew of valuable metals, including tantalum and niobium.
A Taseko Mines drill crew explores for niobium at the company's Aley property, 140 kilometres north of Mackenzie in northern B.C.
She walked more than 11 kilometres back to the log cabin at her parents' homestead and told her prospector father, Orrin, about her find. She then staked the property.
Half a century and several owners later, Vancouver-based Commerce Resources has been busting a gut to turn French's old claim -- now known as the Upper Fir -- into B.C.'s first niobium-tantalum mine.
Commerce has several big steps yet to take, including a feasibility study and eco-permitting, but hopes to have an open-pit mine producing the rare metals by 2010.
The company wants to call it the Betty French mine.
The potential mine's namesake, now 84 and living in a Merritt seniors' complex, reacts with terse wit to news of these plans.
"Nice of them," she says with a dry chuckle. "Go down in history."
Mining companies are scouring B.C. in a bid to find niobium, a rare and highly prized metal used to make specialized steels.
If the metal's strong prices hold up, B.C. may turn out to be one of the few places in the world to have commercial quantities of niobium.
Vancouver-based Taseko Mines announced last month that it has bought the Aley niobium project 140 kilometres north of Mackenzie from a private company for an undisclosed price.
Why would a company known for its Gibraltar copper-molybdenum mine take a flyer on a little-known industrial mineral?
Taseko CEO Russ Hallbauer says global demand is growing at five to eight per cent a year.
Hallbauer had looked at another niobium property in central Africa but decided buying one in his politically stable back yard made more sense.
World production is dominated by three producers -- two of which are Brazilian. The third is Iamgold's Niobec Mine in Quebec -- which, incidentally, Hallbauer's late father, Robert, built in the mid-1970s during his career at Teck Corp.
Taseko is putting together a drilling program for Aley for 2008.
"We're not going to go slow on this," Hallbauer says. "We think it's probably one of the best niobium properties in North America because of its apparent grade."
In September and October, Vancouver-based Rocher Deboule Minerals acquired two adjacent niobium properties six kilometres northeast of Manson Creek in north-central B.C.
Rocher Deboule president Larry Reaugh says the properties are a key part of his strategy of compiling a basket of commodities used in steel making -- niobium, manganese and fluorite.
Driving the interest in B.C. niobium is the mineral's lofty price -- and a shortage of late-stage projects around the world ready to fill growing demand.
Niobium currently fetches $26-$27 US a pound, up sharply from $8.75 at the start of 2007, Reaugh says.
"I expect niobium to stay quite strong until about 2015. By that time there should be enough new production that comes on to stabilize the price," Reaugh says. "After this production comes on, it could go down to about $15 US a pound."
Commerce Resources began drilling its Blue River tantalum-niobium property in 2001, bringing it further down the road to production than either of its hard-rock peers.
Bullish on Blue River's prospects, the company doubled the size of the property last month by staking another 95 claims.
It has, so far, identified 14 carbonatites on the entire property.
Commerce is focusing development efforts on the property's Upper Fir deposit. Next year, it has earmarked $5 million for field work at Blue River, which is blessed with a multi-pronged infrastructure of rail, power and road.
"This deposit is unique because it's comparable to a world-class niobium deposit, except that it has high-grade tantalum," Commerce spokesman Chris Grove says.
"We have always considered this project to be driven by the tantalum values, but with the rise of niobium's price, the value proposition has shifted."
Commerce's luck with the Upper Fir deposit has been better than Betty French's.
At first, she thought the niobium and tantalum on her claim would yield a mine, but those to whom she optioned her ground felt otherwise.
French, who was as handy with a rifle as she was with a beaver trap, never made much money from a lifetime of on-and-off prospecting.
The homesteading, trapping and mineral-hunting lifestyle was its own reward, she says.
"It was a hard life," she says. "You had to be tough to live in that country."
pluke@png.canwest.com
GREEK ROOTS
Niobium and tantalum have a bright future and the darkest of names.
Niobium, also known as columbium, is named for Niobe, an ancient Greek whose 14 children were killed by the gods to punish her arrogance.
Niobium is used to make high-strength steels needed for pipelines, cars and bridges. It's also used in jewelry, jet turbines, super-conductors and other high-tech applications.
Tantalus, a no-good spawn of Zeus, was said to be guilty of cannibalism and human sacrifice. He was condemned to stand in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree with low-hanging branches. When Tantalus reached for a fruit, the branches retreated out of reach. When he bent to drink, the water likewise receded.
The spot price of tantalum concentrate has typically been in the $25- to $30-US-a-pound range. Recently, it has risen to as high as about $45 US a pound.
Analysts expect that growing demand for tantalum capacitors in cellphones, computers and in super alloys for jet engines will keep prices high in the short to medium term.
© The Vancouver Province 200
