Canada Unearthed: This spinout explorer is looking for the next Nova… in Quebec

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Our Canada Unearthed column wraps the news driving mining and exploration stocks listed in Canada, mostly on the TSX and TSX.V.

Canada’s newest nickel explorer is on a tear.

Having landed on the TSX-V only on Wednesday last week, plenty of interested money has been flowing into SRQ Resources.

A spin-out from African nickel hunter Sama Resources, itself a mighty 70% higher so far in 2023, SRQ has drawn plenty of intrigue with its plans to explore the Lac Brule project in the upper Laurentian region of Quebec.

Since listing, its shares are already up a tasty 64%, rising 11c to 28c Canadian.

Located six hours north of Montreal, SRQ boasts some 420 exploration claims in the townships of Nivernais and Esgriseilles, pegged across 2020, 2021 and 2022.

Containing a nickel-copper gossan identified in May 2021, Lac Brule has never been explored.

But there are plenty of reasons to think nickel — need we remind you, an essential component in the powerful batteries that power up-market, long range electric vehicles — could be sitting beneath the surface.

It sits just 50km from the now defunct Renzy nickel-copper mine, which was uncovered by prospectors in 1955 but ran dry in the early 1970s.

But ground outside the proximity of the historic mine, including the 230km2 expanse of the ‘virgin’ Lac Brule property, has gone unexplored.

Looking for the next Nova

But it isn’t comparisons to Renzy, a small mine that produced around 716,000t at grades of around 0.7% Ni and 0.72% Cu, aren’t what really excite.

It’s the links to the Nova-Bollinger nickel and copper deposit on the other side of the world in WA that pique our interest.

The ‘Next Nova’ is a phrase dripping in promise yet covered in the tears of failure from explorers over the past decade.

IGO is on the hunt for the new Nova. Which Fraser Range explorer holds the next nickel elephant?

Mostly those companies have been looking for things similar to the old Sirius Resources discovery nearby in the Fraser Range of WA’s Goldfields.

Even IGO (ASX:IGO), which bought Sirius and major shareholder Mark Creasy out in 2015, has been unable to hit the mark, with only a host of small discoveries since around the now depleting ~27,000tpa nickel sulphide mine.

Yet analogous geological conditions persist elsewhere. SRQ says the host rocks are similar to those at Renzy and Lac Brule.

“As for the Nova Bollinger Ni-Cu deposit recently discovered in Australia, it can be seen that the geological host is very similar to host rock at the Renzy and at the Lac Brule area: Greenville type metamorphism with sub-horizontal layering,” the company says.

And the important thing about the Nova story isn’t so much where it was but this: When Mark Bennett and his company Sirius made the find they were on their last dime, facing a potential discounted capital raising to keep the less than $10 million explorer drilling.

By the time IGO came calling it had to pay the equivalent of $1.8 billion in cash and shares to get the deal across the line.

That’s the sort of rags to riches tale any explorer is keen to emulate.

So what are they doing?

Parent company Sama’s main game, Samapleu in Cote d’Ivoire, contains a measured and indicated resource of 33.18Mt at a 0.269% nickel equivalent grade, along with another 17.78Mt at 0.248% NiEq in the inferred category.

But in the background its been quietly preparing for SRQ’s Canadian adventures, running geophysics, geochem, sampling and mapping, including a 1494 line kilometre HELITEM survey over the whole Lac Brule property in 2021.

Ground EM and IP geophysical studies over the gossan and north zones occurred last year, with first phase drilling due to begin this summer.

It all comes as the world seeks new sources of nickel sulphides in the West to replace depleting sources, with Chinese-funded operations in Indonesia remaining the only significant growth area for the industry despite its centrality to the future of the EV sector.

TSX and TSX.V Winners & Losers

Here’s how TSX and TSX.V-listed mining and exploration stocks performed last week:

Scroll or swipe to reveal table. Click headings to sort. Best viewed on a laptop.

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