|
Ahead
Of The Herd Interview; Richard (Rick) Mills
1
of 3
Richard (Rick) Mills
Ahead of the Herd
As a general rule, the
most successful man in life is the man who has the best information
Aheadoftheherd: Rick could you give us some basic facts
regarding Greenland, an introduction if you will.
Rick: Greenland is the largest island in the
world, its located in the North Atlantic Ocean adjacent to the Canadian
arctic archipelago. About 84 per cent of Greenland is ice cap but there’s an
ice-free zone around the ice that’s up to 300 kilometers (kms) wide.
We’re talking an area of about
410,000 km². Just to give your readers a reference as to how big an area that
actually is, Germany is 357,000 km².
AOTH: Greenland’s been making news over the
last while about being one of, if not the last, frontiers for resource
extraction. How prospective for discovery is this immense area?
Rick: Very. As I mentioned just over 80
percent of Greenland is covered by the ice sheet, the exposed area suitable
for mineral exploration and project development forms a fringe around
the coast.
These non ice covered coastal
areas are simply an extension of the Canadian Shield so Greenland’s geology
is continuous with that of Canada and includes:
- Archaean
cratons - potential for diamonds, gold, REE
- Palaeoproterozoic
mobile belts - potential for base metals, PGE’s, gold and tantalum
- Lower
Palaeozoic sediments - potential for base metals
- Carboniferous
Cretaceous sediments - potential for coal
- Lower
Tertiary intrusive complexes, the Skýrgaard intrusion being the most
important in terms of gold and PGE potential
AOTH: The geology is the same as Canada’s
north, are working conditions?
 Rick:
I would say they
are very similar. You are working in the north, summers are cool, short and
there is a lot of daylight, winters are long, cold and dark. Exploration
programs cannot be run in either area when its deep winter. Miners of course
mine year round.
Canada’s north has major
highways with secondary road access into many areas and its possible to
permit road construction. The area that’s non-accessible via the current road
system is immense and that necessitates winter roads, occasionally river
barges and a lot of fly in camps.
Greenland doesn’t have a
highway system to speak of, people live in towns on the coast or further up
the fjords, so they mostly travel by boat, planes and helicopters. Travel by
sea is possible throughout the year from Nanortalik, in the South, to Sisimiut
in the north west, these ports have a year round shipping season.
Travel from Sisimiut to sites
further north doesn’t start till May, at the earliest, because of ice,
although climate change is playing a role here with sea ice disappearing at
an advanced rate.
AOTH: In Canada’s north mostly everything is
done by road/air and in Greenland everything is done sea/air.
Rick: In Greenland, if you are working in
the southwest part of the country, you are never far from year round open
deep sea water, meaning a sea port, or the possible future site of a rough
loading dock, tie up for a couple of barges and deep water anchorage for a
freighter.
I believe this is a huge
advantage, let’s call it like it is, exploration is exploration, sure one
area might be more expensive then another but so what? The main consideration
factor is what are you going to do if you actually find something and this is
the advantage sea borne freight has over road transport – cost.
AOTH: Access to the sea puts the world’s
smelters, end users, middlemen etc at your fingertips. But sea transport also
lowers your upfront development costs and capex/opex when it comes time to
build and run your mine.
Rick: Yes. If you are in the interior of
Canada’s north you need to road transport your product, usually across vast
distances, to get it to a railhead or port, sometimes utilizing both a
railway and ocean freighter to get it to a smelter. Of course the reverse
order applies when you are doing exploration and development.
Transport distances in
Greenland from your project site to open water are usually very short, we’re
talking maybe tens of kilometers with some projects much closer versus road
transport measuring hundreds of kilometers in Canada’s north.
The more complicated, the more
time consuming, the greater the distances, the more players, or pieces if you
will that are involved makes it that much more expensive.
AOTH: Something you mentioned regarding the
sea ice is interesting, is global warming opening up Greenland for
exploration?
Rick: Yes, but not in the way many think.
The ice cap is up to three kilometers thick in places, it may be melting a
little around the edges and on top but if you wait for land to open up from
that you’ll be sitting for a while.
As I said you can travel by
sea throughout the year from Nanortalik, in the South, to Sisimiut in the
north west, these ports have a year round shipping season. With the
continuing disappearance of the sea ice its possible more of the fringe along
the coast will become accessible for longer periods of time.
That’s what’s going to offer
increased opportunity in Greenland.
|
