Doubleview Gold Corp. (DBG-TSXV) believes that the scandium reserves within its Hat Project have the potential to disrupt Canada’s rare earth element market. The company has made significant progress in discovering and developing the deposit. However, before delving into the details of Doubleview’s claim, let’s first understand the background of their successful exploration and advancement of the project.
The company acquired the Hat Project in 2011. The property is 6,308 hectares in size and is located in northwestern British Columbia, 95 kilometres southwest of Dease Lake and 190 kilometres south of Atlin. Access to the property is from the Golden Bear Road, which comes within 10 kilometres of the property and Highway 37, an all-weather hard surfaced road, that is just 95 kilometres to the east. Should power be needed in the future, the Northwest Transmission Line brings electric power to within 120 kilometres of the property.
The Doubleview team discovered the Hat deposit from a greenfield prospect in its first drilling season. As with a number of this province’s porphyry deposits the initial six holes were a marginal but encouraging success. A more aggressive follow-up drilling campaign in 2014 resulted in the discovery of the Lisle Zone, a higher grade portion of the deposit. Further drilling in 2015, 2016 and 2021 confirmed the presence of a very large porphyry deposit. Although mineralization exceeds 900 metres in some drill holes, the deposit has yet to be delineated in any dimension and now has a sulphide footprint of more than eleven square kilometres.
The Hat Project is host to an alkalic-type gold copper porphyry that has many similar characteristics in genesis, host rock types, alteration and mineralization to several important British Columbia mines, including Mount Polley, Mount Milligan, and Red Chris. Sulphide mineralization, primarily chalcopyrite, occurs in fracture zones of the host dioritic intrusive as well as strongly altered andesitic volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks of upper Triassic age.
All told, the Hat deposit had all of the characteristics of being just another porphyry in the long list of BC porphyry deposits. But then, in July of 2021 the company mentioned that in addition to gold and copper, Hat mineralization carries possibly significant quantities of important strategic metals. The company stated that its ongoing exploration would also focus on important critical metals, including cobalt, palladium and scandium.
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