Québec Nickel Corp. (CSE: QNI) (OTCQB: QNICF) provided an update of its recent exploration activities at its Ducros Ni-Cu-Co-PGE-Au Project, 80 kilometres northeast of Val-d’Or, Québec.
Highlights:
• Drilling at the Fortin Sill Zone continues with two drills, targeting extensions of the Ni-Cu-PGE zone, testing anomalies like the geophysical fingerprint of the Fortin Sill Zone as well as exploring the mineralized system at depth.
• Inaugural drilling program at the Ducros Ultramafic Sill Complex (DUSC) completed with permissive rock types encountered in all holes.
• Multiple coincident geophysical anomalies identified at the Ducros Gabbro and DUSC target areas that will be drilled this coming year as part of a planned 20,000 metres exploration drilling program.
2022 Diamond Drilling Program Update
Fortin Sill Zone
Drilling at the Fortin Sill Zone and the immediate area continues with two surface drills. The focus of drilling is the interpreted extensions of the nickel-copper-PGE zone, evaluating multiple geophysical anomalies that have similar expressions as that at the Fortin Sill Zone, as well as exploring the mineralized system at depth. As previously reported, a second drill was mobilized to the Fortin Sill Zone drilling program in October following the Company’s drilling success, including an 8.43-metre-long intersection assaying 1.85% Ni, 1.65% Cu (3.50% Ni + Cu), 576 ppm Co and 3.27 g/t Pt-Pd-Au in hole QDG-22-29.
Core logging and sampling are in progress and results are pending for over 50% of the samples submitted to the assay lab for this phase of work.
Ducros Ultramafic Sill Complex
As announced on September 19, 2022, exploration drilling began in the central portion of the Ducros property at the Ducros Ultramafic Sill Complex (DUSC). The objective of the Phase I drill program at the DUSC was to obtain the first ever geological information from this ~2 kilometres wide by ~10 kilometres long exploration target area. This area is interpreted to be underlain by significant volumes of ultramafic to mafic dikes and sills that have been injected into an extensive package of sulphide-bearing clastic metasediments and metavolcanics.
As the target area is covered by variable thicknesses of overburden and contains little to no outcrop exposure, the current geological interpretation of the DUSC target area is derived from Québec Government geology maps that are in turn based on interpretations of historical airborne geophysical datasets.
Québec Nickel reported that its Phase I drilling program at the DUSC target was successfully completed and the drill contractor has demobilized from the area. Over 3,650 metres in 10 holes were drilled along an east-west fence. This fence of holes spans more than 800 metres across the interpreted north-south strike of the regional geological trend. These holes targeted strong magnetic high geophysical features with well-defined flanking and/or coincident electromagnetic conductive anomalies, as highlighted by the VTEMTM airborne survey completed in Q2 2022, and further refined by high-resolution drone magnetic surveys.
All drill holes encountered rock types that support the geological interpretation of the DUSC, including but not limited to thick mafic to ultramafic intrusive units, graphitic metasedimentary seams, sulphide +/- oxide facies iron formation, felsic to intermediate metavolcanics and related breccias as well as sequences of silicified +/- sulphide-bearing exhalative/volcanogenic/volcanoclastic rock units. Core logging and sampling is in progress and assay results from the Phase I DUSC drilling will be reported when available.
Due to the saturated ground conditions along portions of the existing access trail into the DUSC target area, the company engaged the services of Northern Mat & Bridge (NM&B) to facilitate the mobilization of the drill and support equipment to the work area. NM&B, a Canadian company with an office in Montreal, Québec, specializes in providing safe, environmentally benign, and cost-effective temporary access solutions to otherwise impassable terrain for reasons such as poor ground conditions, weather, sensitive farm/grass lands and traditional land use areas.
Utilizing the expertise and services of NM&B supports Québec Nickel’s philosophy of minimizing the impact of its work programs on the environment. NM&B have returned to the Ducros project and have begun the process of removing the temporary environmental matting along the access trail into the DUSC target area.
2023 Drilling Program Planning
Québec Nickel received the final results of the fixed-wing airborne gravity survey completed by Xcalibur Multiphysics in September. The 2,054 line-kilometre Falcon Gravity system survey was flown at a 100-metre line spacing and covers the entire Ducros property. In addition, final data from the additional 3,000 line-kilometers of high-resolution drone magnetic surveys have also been received from Vision4K and have been incorporated into the geophysical database.
The integration and modelling of these new datasets, in conjunction with the previously acquired VTEMTM data has led to the identification of multiple high-priority drill targets at both the Ducros Gabbro and DUSC target areas.
At the Ducros Gabbro target, multiple coincident geophysical anomalies (magnetic highs + electromagnetic anomalies +/- anomalous gravity signatures) occur along and within the distinctive geophysics of the southeast edge of the gabbroic intrusion as well as within the southern tail of the gabbroic body (Figure 1). At the DUSC target area, numerous similar geophysical anomalies have been identified through the analyses of the updated dataset (Figure 1).
With these data sets and new Ni-Cu-PGE drill targets in hand, and with the positive drilling results returned from the Fortin Sill Zone to date, planning is currently underway that will see 20,000 metres of new drilling completed at all three targets in 2023. For a full update including Geology Studies, and details on the company’s Core Processing and Quality Assurance and Quality Control (QAQC) program please visit the Québec Nickel website.