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Projects
Martiniere
Overview
The Martiniere Property is located about 600 kilometres northwest of Montreal, Quebec, 45 kilometres east of the Detour Gold Mine development project and approximately 20 kilometres west of Balmoral's Fenelon project along the Detour-Sunday Lake Deformation Zone. Balmoral Resources purchased an option to purchase a 100% interest in the Martiniere Property in November 2010 and is the operator of the Martiniere Project.
Martiniere, and Balmoral's Detour Trend Gold Project, are located in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt in Western Quebec. The volcanic, intrusive and sedimentary rocks which form the Abitibi Belt are ancient -- generally between 2.2 and 3.0 billion years in age, and form one of the core elements to the North American continent. Home to vast gold, copper, nickel, zinc and silver resources the Abitibi's mineral endowment make it one of the richest segments of the Earth's crust. With over 190 million ounces of historic gold production and reserves the gold deposits of the Abitibi represent the second greatest accumulation of gold on the planet.
Gold mineralization within the Abitibi is spatially located proximal to one of several major regional faults systems (deformation zones) which traverse the ancient rock sequence for 100's of kilometres in an east-west direction. These deep seated fault zones, which have been imaged by deep seismic surveys to depths of 10s of kilometres below surface, are the "pipelines" which allowed deep seated, hot (>300 degree Celsius) gold-bearing fluids to penetrate into secondary faults in the surrounding rocks.
The Martiniere Property spans an 8.5 kilometre section of one of these fault systems the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone ("SLDZ"). The SLDZ is a regional scale fault system which 45 kilometres to the west hosts the soon to be in production Detour Gold deposit in Ontario. As elsewhere in the Abitibi proximity to one of these regional scale fault systems is key to identifying significant gold resources. The Martiniere Gold System is located within the central portion of the Martiniere Property approximately 2.0 kilometres north, and roughly paralleling the SLDZ
The Martiniere Gold System which incorporates a number of, dominantly high grade (> 5 g/t), gold discoveries in an open-ended corridor which spans over 1,500 metres in an NNE-SSW direction and a minimum of 400 metres in a north-south direction. All of the discoveries in the Martiniere area are "blind" being located beneath extensive overburden cover. Careful application of advanced geophysical and geochemical methods, detailed geological observations and the use of modern exploration models has led to considerable success in the Martiniere area which has obvious application throughout our 80+ kilometre long land position along the Detour Gold Trend
As well as gold the Abitibi is home to numerous copper-zinc (+/- gold and silver) deposits of the volcanogenic massive sulphide ("VMS") family. These polymetallic deposits pre-date the gold deposits having been formed at the same time as the host rocks. VMS deposits are most commonly in the 1 to 5 million tonne range although the Abitibi hosts some of the world's largest deposits of this type reaching the 50 to 100 million tonne range including the 50+ million tonne Selbaie deposit located 30 kilometres south of Martiniere. VMS deposits are commonly found in clusters around ancient volcanic centers.
The discovery of a small, non-economic VMS system at Martiniere in 2010 suggests previously unrecognized potential for addition, hopefully more base metal rich, discoveries on the Property and throughout the Detour Trend Project area.
