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Energy
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General Market Commentary
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General Energy
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General Market Commentary
Second life for historic silver camp
Frank Santaguida, vice-president of exploration for First Cobalt Corp., hosted a talk at the monthly meeting of the Sudbury Prospectors and Developers association regarding the company's Cobalt Camp operations. The company released their latest findings on the historic silver mining area, as swell as their plans for a 2018 drilling program.
The land around the town of Cobalt, despite the name, was once one of the richest silver finds in the nation.
Decades after that boom ceased, another one is on the horizon, this time for the town's namesake.
As demand for electric vehicles grows across the world, one company is taking a second look at the cobalt resources that were once thrown away.
First Cobalt Corp. gave a Jan. 16 presentation in Sudbury on their latest findings and plans to drill on several properties they purchased near Cobalt, many of them historical silver mine sites, to determine the scope and quality of the cobalt resources.
Frank Santaguida, vice-president of exploration for the company, led the discussion, which included everything from the history of the community to the challenges of accurately mapping resources in areas where material was moved from one location to another.
“What we are presenting here is the work we've done in the past year in the Cobalt Camp,” he said.
He described the presentation as an open discussion on the learning process over this last year. The team and company has been learning how to explore the area geologically, find old cobalt deposits where there used to be silver, and discover new veins and resources.
For the history aspect, Santaguida talked about the history of the area, when 50 million pounds of cobalt and 600 million ounces of silver were taken from about 100 different mines in the area over a 60-year period, with the peak between 1919 and 1931. At the time, he said mining operations were focusing on following the silver veins, and operations were very shallow, about 200 metres below surface.
It is eerie at times, he said, to be in an area that was once home to more than 10,000 people during the silver boom's peak.
Within the property First Cobalt owns, there are 50 previous producing mine sites. In the entire camp, he said, there are 115 old sites.