Clean Air Metals’ vice president of exploration Lionnel Djon says an ambient noise tomography (ANT) survey at the company’s Thunder Bay North platinum group metals (PGMs) project in Ontario, Canada, has thrown up “possible high-grade target areas” for further evaluation in 2025.
The junior said the passive seismic survey conducted in the past summer corroborated a potential 1km down-plunge extension of the Escape conduit intrusion zone said to host about 40% of the 2.4 million equivalent ounces of platinum estimated at Thunder Bay North to date.
It was designed to define the untested southern extension of the Escape intrusion, “which seems to extend for more than 2km along strike, as outlined by the magnetic data”, Clean Air said.
“The ANT survey has proven an invaluable tool for exploring conduits at the Thunder Bay North Complex,” said Djon.
“By measuring velocity changes between rock formations we can more accurately image the potential location of conduits hosting PGE sulphide mineralisation. These results will enable us to target our drilling with significantly greater precision, which is incredibly promising for the project’s future.”
ANT surveys developed by Australia’s Fleet Space Technologies track naturally occurring ambient noise such as ocean wave activity, wind, human activities and atmospheric disturbances to generate seismic waves. Wave analysis creates detailed images of the subsurface.
Clean Air said a follow-up program next summer would involve a detailed deep electromagnetic survey across the southern extension of the Escape deposit.
“This will aim to map the larger sulphide traps within the mineralised conduit,” it said.
“The results from this survey will guide the next phase of drilling, which will focus on identifying new high-grade zones and potentially expanding the resource estimate within the Escape Lake Intrusion.”
