Blue Lake Cu-Ni-PGM to be drilled in July

The Blue Lake, Cu-Ni-PGM historic resource located in the southern Labrador Trough, Quebec will be drilled in early July. Rockland's selected engineering firm, Caracle Creek Consulting, have been making good progress in compiling key data from over 550 holes drilled on the Cu-Ni-PGM showings at Blue Lake property since 1950s. The Blue Lake sulfide deposits are nickeliferous pyrrhotite ores, with a copper content twice that of nickel.  The historical tonnage, established in 1989, was 4.03 Mt at 0.85% Cu, 0.52% Ni and 0.84 g/t platinum and palladium.  Rockland's objective is to bring this mineralization into engineering compliance with National Instrument 43-101 in the shortest time possible.

A little bit of History:

The Blue Lake sulfides were discovered in 1942 by Hollinger North Shore Exploration Ltd, part of Iron Ore Company of Canada, and the first holes were drilled in the 1950's.  Hollinger drilled 39 holes in 1967 and 37 holes in 1968, and established the first resource for the property.  La Fosse Platinum Ltd. purchased Hollinger in 1985, and drilled an additional 400 holes.  This drilling nearly doubled the original Hollinger resource. The 1989 resource quoted above was based on hand generated block models completed before National Instrument 43-101.  The final work completed in 1989 was a 350 meter adit into the Blue Lake #1 lens to extract a 22-ton bulk metallurgical sample.  No work was done at Blue Lake since that time, until Rockland acquired an option on the project in November 2011.

The underground working at Blue Lake #1 gave new insight into the nature of the mineralization.  An internal report from 1989 states: "The average grade from channel sampling in the Blue Lake decline is about 20% higher than the Cu + Ni grade calculated from drill core analysis.  The decline also disclosed a layer of soft chloritic, material 2"-18" thick, at the base of the massive sulphide.  This material averages 0.12 g/t Pt and 6.02 g/t Pd (compared to 0.13 g/t Pt and 1.02 g/t Pd in the massive sulfide).  This layer was not suspected before the decline was driven, as it was not recovered in the core from most of the drill holes."
This report also stated: "Most of the tonnage that has been drill-indicated to date is within 500-feet of the surface.  It is reasonable to suggest that the reserves of massive sulphide in the Blue Lake area above the depth of 1,000-feet could reach 10 million tons.  The base metal content of the deposits discovered in the future will probably be in the grade range of the presently known deposits.  ...The most effective way to explore for massive sulphide is to drill fences of holes in the area where the sulphur-rich peridotite is close to the surface and shallow dipping."

George F. Sanders, P.Geo, states: "We're reading the comments and recommendations of the La Fosse geologists from two decades ago, and we're finding the next phases of drilling, underground sampling, and metallurgical testing to be already laid out for us.  The current metals cycle of high prices will support a robust development program at Blue Lake."

Rockland News: Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGM Core Sampling Completed, Quebec

Rockland Minerals Corp. (TSX VENTURE:RL) (the "Company") is pleased to announce that core samples from the 1,500 meter Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGE drilling program have been submitted to a commercial laboratory for precious metals fire assay and multi-element geochemical analysis. The core was carefully saw-cut, and a half-split was retained at the IOS Services Géoscientifiques facility in Chicoutimi, QC for detailed logging and petrographic studies. The precious metals fire assay procedure to be used for palladium and platinum will be a more robust one assay-ton (50g charge) to insure the most reliable and repeatable results.

Gold fire assay results and multi-element geochemical results are also awaited from Rockland's Schefferville Gold Project, where 367 surface rock chip samples were collected from the new Rusty Acres area during an early summer 2011 field program guided by a detailed 50 meter-spaced heli-mag survey flown in May 2011.

George Sanders, P.Geo, a director of the Company, and qualified Person under NI 43-101 responsible for the technical content of this News Release states: "We all share the anticipation of the Retty Lake drilling results. The drill core was flown from Retty Lake to the nearby town of Schefferville when the drill was de-mobed, but remained in the queue to be transported via rail to the port of Sept-Îles for quite awhile. The intense iron ore development in the Schefferville area is exciting, and better infrastructure favours advancement of Rockland's two exploration projects located very close to Schefferville. There will be bottlenecks here and there as the service sector matures, but the first look at the rock samples from both projects is very encouraging."

Prophecy Platinum's Wellgreen PGE-Ni-Cu property excites investors - good news for fellow explorers like Rockland

On July 14th, 2011 Prophecy Platinum (NKL-TSXV) announced their 43-101mineral resource estimate for its Wellgreen PGE-Ni-Cu property located in the Yukon Territory, Canada. Wellgreen deposit now contains a total inferred resource of 289.2 million tonnes at an average grade of 0.53 g/t platinum, 0.42 g/t palladium, 0.23 g/t gold (1.18 g/t PGM+Gold), 0.38% nickel, and 0.35% copper. Prophecy Platinum's stock moved form $0.77 cents to over $3.00! Rockland's Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGM property is much earlier stage project, however holds potential for the discovery of economically important massive and disseminated Cu-Ni-PGE bearing sulphide deposits in the heart of  the Labrador Trough.

Complete news release here. 

Pictures: Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGE Drill Core and Write up

Must see new pictures of Rockland's Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGE drill core and a technical write-up comparing the rocks to the Ungava southern mineral belt. See pictures at http://bit.ly/mjfwQr . Assay results are in process.

Rockland Completes Drilling at Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGE, Quebec

For Immediate Release. Vancouver, British Columbia, June 22, 2011: Rockland Minerals Corp. (TSX Venture: RL) (the “Company”) has completed its 1,500 meter diamond drilling program on the Retty Lake Cu-Ni-Pt-Pd Property located near Schefferville, Quebec.  A total of 10 holes were drilled to explore for zones of disseminated and massive sulfide within the targeted middle peridotite sill in the NW Retty Lake area.  The core is being shipped off site to a core processing facility to be saw cut and sampled. 

Photographs of Retty Lake drill core textures and a brief geological write-up have been posted on Rockland's website at www.rocklandminerals.ca.

Initial logging of the core has revealed widespread disseminated sulfide mineralization with visible chalcopyrite (copper mineral) within the lower portion of the middle peridotite sill.  In several instances, favourable "net-texture" sulfides were observed to be crystallized within cumulate-texture peridotite.  Two drill holes found an unexpected rock type in place of the middle peridotite horizon.  Instead of the ultramafic peridotite, there was a melanocratic gabbro, which indicates assimilation of the wall rock by the peridotite intrusion.  This typically happens adjacent to feeder dykes, and suggests they may be nearby, although they have never been described at Retty Lake.  Mineralization was also drilled in the upper sill, in addition to the widespread disseminated mineralization found in the middle sill.  This confirms the presence of "stacked" mineralization at Retty Lake. 

George F. Sanders, P.Geo, a director of the Company, and Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101 responsible for the technical content of this news release, states: “We see highly encouraging disseminated sulfide textures in hand samples of the drill core from the Retty Lake Project, and we're only in the beginning stages of unlocking the copper-nickel-platinum-palladium potential of this district.  Because this is the first drill core to come from this area since the 1950's, we plan on doing a careful, thorough job of sawing, splitting and sampling the core."

Photographs of Retty Lake drill core textures and a brief geological write-up have been posted on Rockland's website at www.rocklandminerals.ca.

The Retty Lake property is on-trend with four adjacent copper-nickel-platinum group metal (PGM) lenses known as the “Blue Lake Deposits” -- originally outlined by Hollinger North Shore Exploration (Iron Ore Company of Canada) in the 1950's. Evidently, the Blue Lake Cu-Ni-Pt-Pd deposits were formed at or near the basal zone of the ("Middle") ultramafic peridotite, where the sill intrudes sulfur-rich metasediments.  This favourable stratabound horizon runs for some ten kilometers or more, throughout the Rockland property, in a northwest-southeast trajectory. Rockland is looking forward to discovery of additional base metal - precious deposits within its Retty Lake property.  Rockland is earning a 100% interest in the property from E.D. Black, Geologist.

What are net-texture sulphides?

Rockland Minerals (TSX Venture: RL) recently provided an update on its drilling program at the Retty Lake copper-nickel-platinum-palladium property, in Quebec. In particular, Rockland mentioned observing very encouraging "net-textured" sulphides in this news release.

To provide a bit more insight into "net-textured" sulphides I have posted some info from Wiki-pedia.


"The morphology of Kambalda-type Ni-Cu-PGE deposits is distinctive because the nickel sulfide can be shown to be associated with the floor of a komatiite lava flow, concentrated within a zone of highest flow in the lava channel facies.

The lava channel is typically recognised within a komatiite sequence by;

• Thickening of the basal flow of the komatiite sequence
• Increased MgO, Ni, Cu, and concomitant decrease in Zn, Cr, Fe, Ti as compared to 'flanking flows'
• A 'sediment free window' where sediment has been scoured or melted from the basal or footwall contact of the komatiite with the underlying substrate
• A trough morphology, which is recognisable by a reentrant flat and steep-sided embayment in the footwall underlying thickest cumulate piles

The ore zone typically consists, from the base upwards, of a zone of massive sulfides, matrix sulfides, net-textured ore, disseminated and cloud sulfide."

Wiki goes on to say ....

"The massive sulfide is in some cases overlain by a zone of matrix sulfide. The ideal Kambalda type-section lacks matrix sulfides, which is interpreted to be because of either physical remobilisation, or because matrix ore will only form in quiescent magma conditions, and thus does not form in active channel zones except, perhaps, late in the eruption. However, most other komatiitic nickel ore sections contain matrix to net-textured ore.

Matrix sulfide ore, in high-grade metamorphic areas, is characterised by jackstraw texture, composed of bladed to acicular metamorphic olivine which resembles spinifex textured olivines, within a matrix of nickel sulfide. This texture is formed by metamorphism of the ore, which is interpreted to have been composed of olivine crystals floating in massive sulfide.

Net-textured ore is rarely observed, being the ideal condition of sulfide-silicate immiscibility. This texture is difficult to prove from the majority of komatiite mineralisation profiles, but is known from the Jinchuan intrusive, China, where nickel sulfide forms a network textured groundmass liquid in which olivine floats. Most net-textured ores in komatiites are considered metamorphic overprints.

Disseminated sulfide zones occasionally overly the matrix sulfide zone, grading upwards into barren ultramafic olivine adcumulate. These zones are rarely economic to mine in the majority of komatiites, except when close to surface."

Raglan to Labrador Trough Presentation

Presentation by Rockland Minerals comparing the southern Raglan mineral belt and the rocks in the Labrador Trough, where Rockland has its Retty Lake Cu-Ni-PGM project (presentation here.) The Raglan Mine is a large nickel mining complex in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, Canada.  It is owned and operated by Toronto, Ontario based Xstrata Nickel (formerly Falconbridge Ltd.), a division of Swiss-based Xstrata plc.