Grant: Alliance Grants

Cobalt occurs in a diverse number of deposit types in Canada but is at present exclusively mined out of magmatic-sulfide deposits. Of other cobalt-bearing deposits, the non-magmatic source listed by Natural Resources Canada as closest to cobalt production is the NICO deposit, a cobalt-gold-bismuth-copper deposit located in the NWT that has been previously classified as an iron-oxide-copper-gold (IOCG). Deposits with similarly complex metal assemblages have also been reported in the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake. The major challenge to cobalt extraction in these deposits in comparison to magmatic-sulfide deposits are lower grades, a larger number of metals, and a significantly more diverse mineralogy that presents metallurgical challenges in conventional pyrometallurtical smelters. The concentrations and ratios of cobalt, gold, bismuth and copper ± nickel within and between deposits is highly variable making predictions on the spatial distribution of metals and mineralogy a challenge. In that context, this project aims to determine what factors control the distribution of nickel, cobalt, bismuth and copper within deposits and between some of the deposits in the Bear Magmatic Zone and in the East Arm of the Great Slave Lake.Cobalt and nickel are two of the six minerals prioritized by Canada. One means to expand the Canadian portfolio of these metals would be addressing the mineralogical challenges of extracting cobalt from deposit types other than magmatic-sulfide. In that front, this research project would support domestic critical mineral value chains from the perspective of exploration, therefore fitting within the scope of this call.The partner organizations in this research will be Fortune Minerals Limited, a mining company that holds the NICO mineral leases, and the Northwest Territories Geological Survey (NTGS), which is the main provider of geosciences information in the NWT. Both Fortune Minerals Limited and the NTGS are involved in developing the research questions in this project and will be involved along the project providing expertise in the regional and deposit scale geology as well as in kind support in the field and through sample donation.