Resource World Magazine

F E B R U A R Y / M A R C H 2 0 1 9 www.resourceworld.com 9 moving from onshore to offshore explora- tion and production." However, in the United States there is the added problem of much land not being available for prospecting. According to a new book (Groundbreaking – America's New Quest for Mineral Independence – see page 7), 71% of federal lands are off limits, 427 million acres; a land area equal to Arizona, Colorado, Montana, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming combined. This was due to pro- wilderness, anti-mining, anti-energy laws, regulations, bureaucratic roadblocks, envi - ronmentalist lawsuits and court decisions. However, mineral explorers carry on. Buskard said the focus now is: "How do we explore undercover? That's our chal- lenge but that's also the opportunity. If you look at these mature districts, in most cases, the areas that are covered are in fact larger than the areas that are exposed. That means we still have an even bigger area yet to explore – it's challenging but what an incredible opportunity!" To that end, Nevada Exploration's management team has integrated the use of hydrogeochemistry (groundwater chemistry) with conventional explora - tion tools to develop a Nevada-specific regional-scale generative exploration program. Groundwater drilling costs a fraction of diamond drilling. "Groundwater is a universal solvent, it dissolves everything," said Buskard. "When you have a hidden buried mineral deposit with trace elements, the path - finder elements and the gold end up in the groundwater. Because the groundwater moves, it drags the gold downstream a lit- tle bit, so instead of looking for something that's perhaps a couple hundred metres across, we can look for footprints that can be 2,000 to 3,000 metres across. All of a sudden, we've got footprints that we can look for that are 10 times bigger – which ultimately means we need 10 times fewer samples in terms of sampling density." The company has now completed the world's largest groundwater sampling program for gold exploration, collecting approximately 6,000 samples to evalu - ate Nevada's covered basins for new gold exploration targets. (Refer to company pro- file below.) Contemplating the downturn in junior miner shares prices, Buskard commented, "I think we've reached a point in the mar- ket where we've filtered out a lot of groups that were advancing marginal assets and I think that the focus has been distilled down to what I think are more quality assets but if you look at the distribution of deposit types that are being explored for, they don't match well with the deposit types that have delivered the vast majority of Nevada's production." So what does that mean? Buskard noted that if you look at the ounces that have come out of the ground in Nevada since the late 1800s, close to 95% of those ounces have come from four clusters of Carlin-style deposits in the north-central part of state; namely the Carlin Trend, the Getchell area, Cortez and Jerritt Canyon. "This handful of giant deposits has pro - duced almost all of the gold and today these deposits are still responsible for the vast majority of production," said Buskard. "If you look at Goldstrike and the Cortez Complex, they each produce a million ounces per year or almost 40% of Nevada's production." He went on to say that if you look at where the exploration focus is right now amongst most of the explorers in the state, you will see many projects not focused on those types of large systems. "If we want to get back to putting an exploration dol - lar in and creating value, the focus really has to be: How do we get back to finding these huge Carlin-style systems, though this time, under cover?" said Buskard. BELOW ARE NEVADA COMPANY PROFILES. Alba Minerals Inc. [AA-TSXV; AXVEF- OTC; A117RU-FSE] holds the Rainbow Canyon gold property in the Olinghouse mining district, Washoe County. Hole RCR- 03 intersected 1.52 metres of 19.65 g/t gold from 100.58 to 102.11 metres, within an intersection of 9.14 metres at 3.69 g/t gold. The company also has Muddy Mountain lithium prospect in the Muddy Mountains of Clark County. NEVADA NEVADA Aquifer drilling to test for the presence of gold at Nevada Exploration's South Grass Valley Project. Photo courtesy Nevada Exploration Inc.

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