With the permits to drill on private land, we should soon know what’s going on below surface to account for the extremely high grade gold and uranium values that have been encountered in grab and channel samples on Mawson’s Rompas project in Finland. We first looked at the company during the summer of 2010 with the shares around 40 cents but realized then that the first drills wouldn’t hit the ground for probably a couple of years so we didn’t think there was a hurry to own the shares. Well, along came some reco’s including by Mickey Fulp that got the share price way up and we didn’t get the chance to buy the deal cheap … but the last year or so the stock has been languishing in the $1.50 to $2.00 range and that is still a pretty good value given the raw possibilities of what the drill bit could encounter in short order. I grant that the imminent drilling on private property will not test the most prospective targets but there is still a very good chance of coming up with something. And possibly the claims will be fully vested in Mawson’s name during the first half of this year, which could lead to a more extensive drill campaign that tests a large portion of the 6+ kilometer strike of the system.
The “something” at Rompas has few analogies in the world — perhaps just the Matoush project of Strateco and the Lavoie/Epsilon properties of Abitex in the Otish Mountains of Central Quebec. Gold and uranium mineralization there appear to be associated with a granitoid intrusion into Proterozoic (really old!) sedimentary carbonate and volcanic rocks followed by possible remobilization of the gold and uranium values during subsequent intrusive and metamorphic events in a tectonically active setting. At Rompas, extremely high values of uranium in uraninite (a uranium oxide mineral often formed in hydrothermal settings) and native gold has been encountered in grab, chip and channel sampling including of presumptive veins and stockworks zones with similarities to the Au-U deposits in Quebec. The sheer size of the potential mineralized area at Rompas, however, dwarfs anything that has been found in the Otish Mountains to date.
There are a number of possibilities for the gold and uranium occurrence at Rompas. A bad one would be that it consists of a superficial varnish of mineralization deposited in flat horizontal layers along permissive rock strata (or in a supergene zone at the water table) during regional metamorphism. This could be bad because a primary horizontal geometry to the mineralization would limit the tonnage and thus might mean Rompas is really just a modest Au-U deposit despite the large footprint and high grades encountered in surface samples. Possible signs of a primary horizontal orientation to the mineralization might be: (1) the spatial relationship of Rompas to nearby mineralizing sources, which might make sills (horizontal magmatic flows) vs. dykes (vertical magmatic flows) the main intrusive features within the project area; (2) the extremely high grade and oxidized nature of the mineralization could indicate precipitation at a strong redox boundary (e.g. water table) or metasomatic contact (skarn in carbonate rock); and (3) lack of apparent geometry to the mineralization (not surprising given few outcrops).
On the other hand, the geophysics indicates the mineralization is associated with a system that may have a substantial vertical extent and the high grade gold at least might be explained in part by remobilization and concentration in classic highly strained fabrics in ductile rocks (e.g., boudins) with uraninite crystals forming in brittle rocks (e.g. fracture filling and stockworks). A substantial vertical extent of such rocks may be preserved at Rompas especially since there doesn’t appear to be a major radioactive boulder train or scree that resulted from the glaciation that scraped the land flat. In addition, the geophysics also indicates that magnetic and chargeable features repeat as parallel anomalies along north-south trends and these could be associated with structural features such as shears or folds that again might inpart a significant vertical component to the mineralization. Finally, the possibility that hydrothermal veins also exist at Rompas cannot be ruled out and if so then things are going to get very exciting when the drill bit gets turning.
With the initial drilling, we might expect hit-and-miss results because at least one component of the mineralization appears to be related to localization in shear zones. Thus it means very little if a particular hole does not encounter significant mineralization. What matters is the geology (let’s hope the dominant intrusives are not sills and the mineralization is not a metasomatic contact crust or thin supergene layer) and more importantly that at least some of the holes do intercept the same type of bonanza gold-uranium mineralization at depth that has been found at surface.
When considering everything, the possibility that there is a substantial vertical extent to the high grade mineralization appears good although drilling is bound to generate variable results … unless the source of the bonanza grab samples at surface is a major structurally controlled hydrothermal system. In that case, Mawson will be easily a ten bagger.
a year ago 
