An Interview with Tirex Resources Chief Geologist, Dr. Allan Miller
- Dr. Allan Miller, Tirex Chief Geologist, conducting field work at Mirdita
Skanderbeg Capital Group recently caught up with Dr. Allan Miller, Chief Geologist at Tirex Resources.
Dr. Miller is a distinguished Mineral Deposits Specialist who is headlining the Tirex Resources technical team in Albania. His expertise has played an integral role in the mapping and interpretation of the mineralization and geology of Tirex’s Mirdita District.
Prior to working with Tirex, Dr. Miller was a Mineral Deposits Research Scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada, where he was tasked with regional-scale metallogenic and deposit-scale alteration studies in northern Canada.
Dr. Miller’s technical expertise and intimate knowledge of the Mirdita property makes him the obvious point-man for a real discussion on the property.
Skanderbeg Capital (SC):
Mirdita is a district that has had significant past production but has never really been explored with a large scale, systematic modern exploration program. What has the modern exploration conducted by Tirex to date added to the geological understanding of Mirdita?
- Dr. Allan Miller, Chief Geologist, conducting field work in a highly prospective area at Mirdita.
Dr. Allan Miller (AM):
To appreciate Tirex’s contribution to understanding the complexities of Mirdita geology, one has to be aware of the history behind the evolution of geological concepts in Albania. Exploration and mining in the Mirdita District spanned a period from the mid 1960s to the early 1990s when the Albanian Communist Government collapsed. This thirty year period of geological and mining activity in Albania can be described as isolationist. The ideology of the Communist Government did not allow its geoscientists to interact with or utilize any of the concepts and current ideas that were being formulated by western geoscientists and explorationists. This same period was a time when western geoscientists were making significant advances in the descriptive aspects of mineral deposits, processes that formed mineral deposits, in particular volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits and developing new instrumentation to explore for VMS deposits. In 2006, Tirex Resources acquired the VMS mining district, a district that had not been explored with current mineral deposit concepts or technologies. By analogy, this land acquisition would be similar to being able to acquire the exclusive mineral rights to explore comparable volcanic terrains in Canada that have evolved into major VMS mining camps, i.e. Snow Lake-Flin Flon, Mattagami or Noranda, mining districts which host significant to world class VMS deposits.
The syndicate that initially acquired the Mirdita mining district completed the first airborne electromagnetic survey over the entire property. The property along with this new data base was subsequently acquired by Tirex Resources. It is important to state here that the previous three to four decades of research into understanding VMS mineralization had demonstrated conclusively that ore deposits were formed at the same time as the volcanic rocks that host the deposits and that the deposits are associated with faults that were active during the formation of those deposits. This airborne survey provided the Tirex exploration team with information that several conductive trends were present, i.e. potential fault zones that were active during volcanism, and in particular information on the trend that hosts known and previously exploited massive sulphide deposits. This airborne data base along with the compilation of historic Albanian geological data was utilized to design a long term, multi-phased and multi-disciplinary exploration program. The initial focus of the exploration program was drilling to confirm and extend known VMS mineralization, commence a geological mapping program to interpret the VMS district within a modern geological context and begin an extensive ground geophysical survey. Each of these components provided information that permitted refinement to the exploration program. The exploration techniques used were: ground-based geophysical surveys to identify altered domains that can envelope mineralization, geological mapping to provide a modern geological framework within which the known mineralization is hosted and identify new prospective domains, geochemistry surveys: i.e. rock geochemistry to identify the types and intensity of alteration along the prospective trends in order to vector into the most prospective area and stream sediment geochemistry surveys to identify new prospective volcanic domains with no known mineralization. This multi-disciplinary exploration program has identified fault directions that controlled alteration and mineralization, identified specific types of volcanic rocks that are directly associated with mineralization and identified alteration zones that are directly associated with mineralizing processes. Knowing these three fundamental criteria, recognition of the volcanic setting, fault history during volcanism and the alteration patterns that were contemporaneous with volcanism is being utilized by the Tirex team to focus the Mirdita VMS exploration drilling in a cost effective and pragmatic approach that was not available to the Albanian geologists from the 1960s to 1990s.
- First ever large scale geophysical testing in Albania
SC:
The Tirex program seems to be a combination of advanced stage definition and expansion drilling in known areas of mineralization alongside of pure exploration, targeting discovery. Of the two what is it that gets you more excited as a geologist?
AM:
Both aspects of the Tirex exploration program are exciting and intellectually intriguing. The benefit of this two tiered exploration program is the feedback mechanism between definition-expansion drilling and regional geological evaluation-target selection-target drilling. Information derived from definition-expansion drilling permits the exploration team to gather data and interpret lithological associations and structural trends that permitted collection and preservation of economic concentration of metals as well as understanding the structural history subsequent to deposition of the ore zones. Developing an understanding of those local ore-controls in one area can be useful in deciphering the lithological and structural setting in exploration target area. Consequently gathering geological data on lithological-structural controls at different scales furthers the understanding of the Mirdita VMS district and the prospects of new discoveries in areas that are under or not explored.
SC:
A lot of regional work and field work including geochem, airborne geophysics, ground geophysics and mapping has been done leading up to where the company is at now, ready to start the 2010 drill program. Has anything surprised you about what the work to date has shown or indicated about the setting?
AM:
Each of these exploration techniques has added useful information to refining the Mirdita VMS exploration model. The precious metal bearing VMS deposits are hosted in a bimodal volcanic suite (basalt and rhyolite) with the proportion of basaltic rocks greater than rhyolitic volcanic rocks. This is a typical lithological association for the mafic-dominated type of VMS deposit. In particular, at each of the areas where definition-expansion drilling has occurred (Letitna-South Gurthi to Central Gurthi-Koshaj), all of the deposits are directly associated with a rhyolite that is compositionally distinct from rhyolite that is not associated with mineralization. The recognition that massive sulphide is associated with a specific composition of rhyolite is most significant and has been invaluable in evaluating the geology and discovery potential in the little or non- explored central segment of the bimodal VMS belt, i.e. Munelle to Qafe Bari area.
SC:
The area north of Munelle is an area that has started to attract a lot of attention. What is it about this area, from an exploration perspective, that makes it so exciting?
AM:
Attention is drawn to the area of Munelle and north to the Qafe Bari area because the volcanic rocks host several significant ore deposits and most notably the reportedly ~8MT Munelle deposit (non-43-101 compliant, historical estimate). In 2008, a preliminary geochemical assessment of the Munelle-Qafe Bari area revealed an abundance of altered felsic rocks with an abundance of the chemically distinctive felsic volcanic rock associated with sulphide mineralization. In 2009, geological mapping along with additional geochemical sampling underscored the significance of the 2008 information and heightened the discovery potential in the Munelle-Qafe Bari area. The most significant exploration-related features are: 1) the proportion of rhyolitic rocks is equal to or greater than basalt, indicating that the Munelle-Qafe Bari was the locus for felsic volcanism, 2) many rhyolitic volcanic centres were identified, 3) the rhyolitic volcanic rocks possess the same chemical affinity as the ore-related rhyolite rocks in the Letitna to Koshaj area 4) the volcanic centres and flanking volcanic rocks have been overprinted by moderate to intense hydrothermal alteration. Importantly this rhyolite-dominated terrain is voluminous i.e. thick and has a north-south strike length of ~2 km. Thus the overlap of ore-related hydrothermal alteration on and adjacent to volcanic centres is a critically important observation that upgrades the discovery potential of this felsic-dominated volcanic sequence. These identical features and temporal relationships between volcanism and alteration have been identified in other parts of the Mirdita belt and other bimodal-type VMS districts that host significant to world-class precious metal bearing copper-zinc deposits.
SC:
In the last phases of drilling, Tirex encountered thick zones of robust mineralization in three separate areas of the District: Koshaj, South Gurthi and Letitna. While exceptionally high grades of copper, zinc, gold and silver were encountered during this drilling, the question of size comes up whenever assessing the potential of a District. Combined, zones such as Koshaj, South Gurthi and Letitna might add up to some very nice size but none of them yet look like the “giant” deposits the team is exploring for. Does the District have the potential to host large size deposits and why or why not?
- Energold Drills used by Tirex
AM:
The Letitna-South Gurthi-Central Gurthi-Koshaj areas will provide a resource when further definition and expansion drilling has been completed in 2010. The most significant feature that must be taken from the former four areas is that each of the zones of mineralization is associated with chemically unique rhyolitic volcanism that is aerially small. In contrast the Munelle to Qafe Bari area is volumetrically rich in rhyolitic volcanic rocks and the greater proportion of those rhyolitic rocks preserve that specialized signature that is associated with mineralization. The Munelle-Qafe Bari area is interpreted as an aerially extensive; ~2 km north to south, east dipping, and thick rhyolitic volcanic field with multiple coalescing hydrothermally altered volcanic centres. Mineralization may be present at one specific level or at multiple levels within this rhyolite-dominated terrain. Historic Albanian exploration drilling has tested the shallower portions of the volcanic pile but the intermediate to deeper down dip extensions have not been tested by drilling or modern down-hole geophysical techniques. In summary, the under explored, aerially extensive, thick and altered Munelle-Qafe Bari rhyolitic terrain possesses the characteristics to suggest that this area has a long lived hydrothermal history and consequently the potential for forming multi-million ton VMS deposits.
SC:
What has your general impression been in terms of working in Albania and how has it compared to other places you have worked in your distinguished career in mineral exploration?
AM:
Exploration is an inherently challenging aspect of the mineral industry and the Mirdita District is no exception. Fortunately the Mirdita VMS district is positioned in northeastern Albania, an area that has received a major upgrade in infrastructure. A newly opened 4-lane super highway connects Kosovo to Durres on the Adriatic Sea. The Tirex property and the deposits in Letitna-South Gurthi-Koshaj are within 20 km of this new highway. Major hydroelectric lines are also near. This district is located approximately 3 hours drive northeast of the capital Tirana.
Tirex Resources has an excellent exploration management team, Geominex Consultants Inc. This team has decades of experience worldwide, a background that permits them to direct exploration and coordinate all logistical aspects so that the project milestones are unimpeded. Even though the property is in areas topographically challenging, access throughout the property is good because of historic and presently used lumber roads.
The dramatic change that occurred with the collapse of the Communist system in the early 1990 and the transition into a stable democratically-ruled Republic along with the recent modernizing of the mining legislation has lead Albania into a period of significant growth and worthy of future foreign investment. The investment by Tirex in Mirdita is opportune considering the continuing demand for metals from developed and developing nations and the enviable position that Tirex Resources, a junior mining company, has established – an under explored, past-producing VMS mining district.
