Mining News: Northern Neighbors: BHP gets out of Storm; Aston Bay looks ahead

Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. Jan. 20 announced that BHP Billiton Ltd. intends to terminate its option for the Storm copper project in Nunavut. The option agreement, which was finalized in May of last year, would have provided C$40 million toward exploration at Storm, which blankets mineralized showings along a more than 100-kilometer-stretch (60 miles) of Somerset Island. In July, Aston Bay launched a C$4 million exploration program funded by BHP Billiton that included roughly 2,000 meters of drilling; re-logging of existing core; mapping; soil sampling; and prospecting. Visual copper was identified in three holes drilled last year. The best hole cut 16 meters averaging 3.07 percent copper and 12.3 grams per metric ton silver. The company said the 2,005 soil samples collected last year confirmed previously known copper in soil anomalies and identified new areas with anomalous copper and zinc. “We remain confident in the technical merits of the Storm Copper and Seal Zinc projects, as well as the exploration potential for both copper and zinc on Somerset Island,” said Aston Bay CEO Tom Ulrich. “We are excited to investigate the source of these anomalies in future programs at Storm,” he added. The company said it will provide information on its plans to continue advancing Storm and Seal in the coming weeks.

-Shane Lasley