Back in the 1950’s, the United States government kicked off a uranium rush in the American west when they decided to pay $3000 a ton for locally produced 0.1% uranium ore, and $7000 a ton for 0.2%, from any private miner who could find such a thing.
The need for fuel to keep pace in the Cold War drove prices and demand, and with the government slated as the only legal buyer, it was a genuine rush to see who could find the good stuff and produce it quickly, before the G-men got to the point where they had stockpiled all they would need.
The rush was so heavy, they even made songs and movies about it.
Canadians obviously got in on the act, as our geologic pointy heads busted out across the country, including at the Serpent River Pecors project near Elliot Lake, Ontario.
While there was plenty of uranium about at the Pecors, the locals were having trouble getting at it because of all the nickel, copper, and platinum group metals in the way. Grades were good enough to make the Americans take notice, but only in certain spots, which meant not a lot of attention was paid to the opportunity for one of the country’s largest nickel anomalies to be exploited.
Soon enough, the Americans were content with what uranium they had, prices dropped, demand dropped, and the geos up north went back to sifting for gold.
And so the Pecors sat and perculated, until a historic resource was gathered by Rio Algom (now a part of the mining monster BHP) in 1974, which pointed out a historic estimate of 20 million tonnes uranium at the location, averaging 0.037%.
Sadly, the 70’s weren’t good for uranium and so the Pecors once again languished.
But not for long – there were other big numbered resources popping off in the region over the years. Immediately west of the Pecors East showing, the Pele Mountain uranium/rare earths project showed 34.6 Mt of 0.04% grades of U3O8 in a 2011 preliminary economic assessment, which seemed to be getting closer to what folks were looking for.
Indeed, the East Pecors anomaly is located 15km from the East Bull Intrusive Suite where Grid Metals Corp. (GRDM.V) intersected 119m of 1.13 g/t Pd_Eq, and Canadian Palladiums (BULL.C) reported a 5m intersection grading 5.1 g/t Pd_Eq in 2020, apparently an extension to their 43-101 compliant inferred resource estimate of 11.1Mt grading 1.46 g/t Pd_Eq.
If that’s a bit technical for you, let’s put it this way: the Pecors anomaly runs some 7km long, 3km wide, and plunges 2km open at depth, good to make it one of the biggest nickel systems in Canada.
Now, if you could base mine economics on resource estimates from 50 years ago, they’d be mining at the Pecors now – but you can’t. Back in 1974, the requirements for a compliant NI 43-101 (the modern day terminology for a full, compliant resource estimate you could take to the bank, regulators, and the market) weren’t exactly stringent.
For the Pecors to be a f’realsies nickel opportunity today, you’d have to do a lot more exploration work and get to the point where you could update that resource estimate.
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS INTERESTING
It took until this past January for someone to finally follow the treasure map to Pecors, when the company that owns the rights to the project, Power One Resources (PWRO.V), went public, having raised some capital to get busy on the work front and FINALLY bring the attention of the world to the potentially massive underground haul of nickel that RIGHT NOW is in demand.
Why is nickel important right now?
#Nickel Prices Jump to New YTD Highs in London https://t.co/ym5LcICCSo pic.twitter.com/1Bj8cXKPC0
— Oliver Groß (@minenergybiz) May 17, 2024
That’s right, though prices have been higher than currently in the last year, they’re running again with political unrest.
Power One, with a small amount of work, can lay out a confirmation of what’s likely underground in decently quick time, and they’re pouring themselves into that work now that they’ve completed their go-public process.
They’d have already been drills in if not for an early snow melt around Christmas, but now they’re looking forward to getting back in.
The emergence of new data on an age old property will no doubt spark interest if nickel prices continue to surge and neighbours keep showing their work.
But there’s another piece of glory in their back pocket that I’m frankly as excited by, even if the company has stated its not a primary focus right now, and that’s their Wicheeda REE Property in BC.
If that name rings a bell for you, dear reader, you may recall it as the place Defense Metals (DEFN.V) has been burning the midnight oil progressing, 80km northeast of Prince George, in the Foreland Belt, where DEFN is looking for rare earth elements.
DEFN has managed to get to the Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) phase, quietly hitting good numbers and moving things along – so much so that other companies have shown up nex tdoor and spent upwards of a million dollars in promotion cash, telling German investors ‘we might be as good as DEFN’, and managing to pump their promo to a $130 million market cap before we tore it to shreds.
The stupidity of Neotech Metals (NTMC.C) was in trying to attach themselves to DEFN without doing any work, and being slapped down by regulators – and us.
In contrast, PWRO is leaving DEFN be, reasoning that there will be a time in the not so distant future where their neighbour’s work will spring their schedule forward. In the meantime, they’re nickel hunting.
Cool cool.
In our system of mining data, PWRO is a level two explorer, meaning they’re very early in their journey, but they’ll jump to a level four as soon as a drill slips into the ground, which will be a quick progression compared to many, but is also why you can currently buy in at a $1.9 million market cap.
You wanna be a bully at the table? A low priced option that’s fresh onto the market provides you that chance, without having to empty the retirement fund.
At the very least, watchlist it. More to come.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Power One is an Equity.Guru marketing client. So is Defense Metals, for that matter.
