Pamplona Sulphur Project – Philippines

The Philippines government, through its Department of Environment and Natural Resources, issued an exploration permit for the Pamplona Sulphur Deposit on Negros Island in 2003. The permit holder has assigned all rights to the sulphur project to one of the Corporation’s operational subsidiaries – Crew Minerals Philippines Inc. This assignment will be formalized on the approval of the exploration permits.

As Mindoro Island is close by, successful mining of the sulphur on Negros could enable Crew’s nickel-laterite project to become self-sufficient in production materials.

Location and geology
The sulphur deposit on Negros Island is found in a concession area of 39 square kilometers and is composed of two exploration permit areas – EP00007-VII and EXPA00068-VII. The deposit is close to a deep-sea port site and access is by a partially rehabilitated forest road from Amlan on the south east coast of Negros. The nearest domestic airport is in Dumaguete, approximately 40 kilometers from the project site.

The deposit consists of a mixed sulphur-sulphide ore with both native sulphur and pyrite/marcasite.

Work completed
A new detailed topographical survey for the Pamplona open pit area has been completed to take into account the rather extensive excavations carried out in connection with trial mining in the 1970s. This has allowed the Corporation to define a suitable sampling site for a 2,000 tonne bulk sample requested by a local fertilizer group for industrial testing.

The sampling will be from a 10 x 50 m NW trending trench excavated to about 6 m depth. The bulk sample will be collected in the lower 2 m of the trench to prevent oxidation of the ore. It is considered that the trench design will easily accommodate double the quantity if desired. Adequate collection of drainage from the trench/pit will be diverted through settling dams with lime for acid neutralization before decantation to the small stream that drains the general area.