Rackla Metals (TSX-V:RAK) is jointly sponsoring a study on its Lentung Tungsten Project in Canada’s Northwest Territories, to gain further geological insights into the deposit and support future resource development and exploration.
The study will be conducted this fall by a master’s candidate from Simon Fraser University with support from Mitacs, a national organisation that facilitates industry-academia research collaboration in Canada.
The work will be supervised by Dr Xinyue Xu, an assistant professor in Simon Fraser University’s Department of Earth Sciences, who specialises in the geochemistry of critical metals and ore-forming processes.
Xu’s research focuses on high-temperature melts and fluids involved in porphyry, skarn, iron oxide-apatite, and carbonatite systems, using fluid and melt inclusion analysis to examine how metals are transported, enriched, and deposited.
According to Rackla, the Lentung study will focus on magma fertility and melt-fluid evolution of the Lened pluton and associated tungsten skarn mineralisation.
The work will combine petrographic characterisation of granites, dykes, skarn minerals, and veins with analysis of melt and fluid inclusions. Analytical methods will include microthermometry, Raman spectroscopy, electron probe microanalysis, and laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.
The research will evaluate the magmatic metal budget, melt-fluid relationships, and metal partitioning at Lentung, with comparisons to the Cantung system, which hosted a past-producing mine that was once a major source of tungsten outside China.
Rackla CEO Simon Ridgway says the work “will present meaningful scientific challenges”.
“This study will provide the company with valuable insights into the Lentung mineralising system.”
Lentung is located within the Tombstone-Tungsten Belt of the western Northwest Territories, about 130km south of Fireweed Metals’ (TSX-V:FWZ) Mactung deposit and 50km north of the past-producing Cantung mine.
The project was previously explored by Union Carbide between 1977 and 1982, with work including 26,900m of diamond drilling. No drilling had been conducted at Lentung since 1982.
Rackla recently launched a 10,000m drill program at Lentung, representing the first drilling on the property in more than four decades. The company expects results from the drilling to contribute to the study.
Rackla Metals is focused on tungsten, gold, and rare earth mineral exploration in the eastern Yukon and western Northwest Territories.
Write to Jackson Chen at Mining.com.au
Image: Rackla Metals
