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Foran readies its Kaskattama drill

2004-06-15 by Will Purcell

Steve Masson's Foran Mining Corp. has come up with what it thinks could be a cluster of kimberlites on its Kaskattama property in northeastern Manitoba. The area to the south and southwest of Foran's gem properties was once a hot play, but the Manitoba diamond hunt failed to produce a single kimberlite pipe despite the efforts of many explorers, including the likes of De Beers Canada Corp. and BHP Billiton Ltd. As a result, Foran's play is likely to remain a tough tout with speculators until the company can deliver a kimberlite or two. Despite the earlier failures in the province, Mr. Masson and Foran believe that they may have solved the Manitoba diamond enigma. Either way, investors should have some answers within weeks.

Mr. Masson started Foran on its diamond hunt early in 2002, with the acquisition of a property near the mouth of the Kaskattama River, about 60 kilometres west of the Ontario border and approximately 275 kilometres northeast of Gillam, close to the southwestern coast of Hudson Bay.

By then, most of the interest in the Manitoba diamond hunt had evaporated, and in any case, Foran's new property was about 300 kilometres to the northeast of where a series of encouraging samples had outlined a broad area of promising kimberlite indicator minerals. As a result, Mr. Masson's fledgling diamond promotion attracted little notice, and a Foran share cost just a sad copper penny in the fall of 2002.

Things turned around late that year, when Foran began picking up a number of gold plays. One of those acquisitions was the North Star project near Snow Lake, which currently is the company's top prospect, and Foran's shares managed to crest at 80 cents this spring, on some promising assays from the play. Nevertheless, Mr. Masson still has high hopes for his Kaskattama diamond hunt.

His current enthusiasm now centres on a property a bit farther to the south. Much of Foran's work is now centred in an area about 200 kilometres to the east of Gillam, on a large hill that is within 80 kilometres to the northeast of Shamattawa and about 125 kilometres to the south of the Hudson Bay coast, near the headwaters of the Kaskattama River.

That still puts Foran's diamond hunt a long way from the region where about $20-million was spent on diamond exploration during a brief frenzy that peaked in 2001, but that distance is a good thing, according to Mr. Masson. "That play never should have happened," he said.

Mr. Masson was one of the first to come across the promising indicator minerals in the region north of Gods Lake when he was working for John Auston and Granges Inc. Mr. Auston had come to Granges from BP Selco, which had been dabbling in diamonds in the Lac de Gras region prior to the first big finds in the area. Selco subsequently decided to abandon gems, much to Mr. Auston's chagrin, and when he took over as head of Granges in 1993, he had his crews keep their eyes open for signs of diamonds. Those crews were managed by Mr. Masson, who was exploration manager of Granges at the time.

Mr. Auston had his hand in a number of other diamond hunts that subsequently delivered enough sparkle to captivate speculators. He was head of Ashton Mining of Canada Ltd. during the latter half of the 1990s, when the company found a series of significantly diamondiferous pipes in Alberta, and the company's Otish Mountains hunt in Quebec was started during his tenure.

Meanwhile, the field crews quickly found signs of diamonds for Mr. Auston and Granges, with the discovery of indicator minerals in the region south of Gillam and north of Gods Lake. Nevertheless, the company did not think that the minerals had come from a nearby source. Mr. Masson said that there was a lot of carbonate material in the surface samples containing the indicators, suggesting a source farther to the north in the Hudson Bay lowlands, and it seemed logical that the indicator minerals would be concentrated in the eskers and moraines to the south of their source region.

In any case, Mr. Masson said that the limestone cover had been scraped off in the region farther south, and even if kimberlites had existed in the area, they would have largely been eroded. As a result, Mr. Masson said that despite the abundant and promising indicator minerals in the region, he had never staked a single claim in the area, as he believed the material was just the glacial scrapings brought southward by glaciers.

The Granges exploration effort apparently had come up with evidence that the minerals came form a more northerly source region, but the likes of De Beers, BHP and Kennecott Canada Exploration Inc. believed otherwise, as they persisted in their search in a big way until recently. "They were just drilling the dirt," Mr. Masson said, adding that he had told the primary explorers that they were wasting their time as early as 1997.

Meanwhile, another busy diamond hunt seemed to elude Mr. Auston, who retired from Granges in 1995, just before the company was amalgamated to form Vista Gold Corp. Vista chose to concentrate its efforts on gold in Nevada, and that left the details of Mr. Auston's embryonic Granges gem hunt to collect dust in a filing cabinet in some basement.

"I knew where that basement was," Mr. Masson said, and in the summer of 2002, he managed to work out a deal with Vista that gave Foran access to all of the Granges data. The sprawling database covered nearly 40 million hectares of ground across Northern Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario, including about six million hectares where detailed sampling had been completed.

Once Mr. Masson had acquired the old data for Foran, he resumed his effort to find the source region for the indicator minerals that had been turned up during his Granges days. He compiled the old data and began following the trail northward once again, toward the Hudson Bay lowlands and the Kaskattama River. Although Foran was one of the last few arrivals to the Manitoba hunt, the company was the first to pick up ground in the area near the Hudson Bay coast.

One of Mr. Masson's key reasons for hope is that his Kaskattama property lies along what he calls "a huge crack on the magnetic map of Canada." The structure runs northwestward from the Attawapiskat region of Ontario, where De Beers has a potential mine at its Victor pipe, into the northeastern part of Manitoba. Kimberlite clusters frequently occur along such structures, and there clearly are kimberlites at the southeastern end of the feature, with over 20 finds in the Attawapiskat region.

As well, Mr. Masson's primary Kaskattama play lies atop a huge hill, and he thinks that could be a key to his new play, as any kimberlites in the immediate vicinity may not have suffered much erosion, unlike the bald shield country to the south.

Although it was the geochemical promise of a broad swath of indicator minerals that triggered the Manitoba diamond play, Foran does not appear to be conducting much in the way of till sampling. Mr. Masson said that conducting indicator mineral surveys in the area would be very impractical, as there was very little till exposed in the swampy region.

Instead, Foran has been relying more upon Mr. Masson's general model and geophysics to come up with its drill targets. Foran had previously completed an airborne survey at a 200-metre spacing over its more northerly property, but that turned out to be somewhat too coarse. As a result, the southern block has now been covered with a 100-metre spacing, and that has produced the current crop of anomalies.

Mr. Masson said that the targets were in the immediate vicinity of the promising geological structure, and they stand out prominently due to the relatively quiet geophysical background levels. As well, the shallow nature of the magnetic signatures adds to Foran's kimberlite hopes.

There are nine intriguing targets in the area, but Foran currently has plans to test just three of them. Mr. Masson said that drilling would start as soon as a drill could be sent to the site, which he expected would take no longer than a few weeks. The modest drill program should take no more than a week or two to prove or kill the three targets and Mr. Masson's theory, and investors could have their answer in early July.

Even if it scores a kimberlite find, Foran would still have to come up with diamonds. That actually could be an easier task, based upon the mineral promise scattered across the area well to the south of the Kaskattama region. So far, finding a single kimberlite pipe has proven to be the biggest stumbling block for the struggling Manitoba play.

If Foran's drill program is successful, it would be quite a coup for the Flin Flon based Mr. Masson, who has been running his own contract exploration company, M'Ore Exploration Services, since the mid-1990s. Now in his mid-50s, Mr. Masson has been poking around Northern Manitoba for the past 15 years, first with Granges and then in a brief stint with Aur Resources Inc.

Mr. Masson was appointed to the board of Foran in 1998, after the company acquired a number of Manitoba projects from M'Ore. The company had a tough time of things for several years and went through a number of changes in its executive offices. Mr. Masson ended up in the top job in 2001, and he sharpened the company's focus on gold, and added diamonds to the mix.

Mr. Masson has not had much of a promotional past, but he has had some success of late at touting Foran's gold projects and if he can come up with a kimberlite discovery in the Kaskattama district, it would give Foran's shares another good boost.