Untapped PGM exploration areas.

Mustang Minerals intends to make a breakthrough in platinum group metals (PGM) exploration on property near Sudbury that yields 'tremendous' potential.

Although River Valley and East Bull Lake garner the most attention as the centre of PGM activity near Sudbury, Mustang Minerals president Robin Dunbar says all of the right indicator rocks are appearing on their Drury Township property west of the city and they plan to being drilling later this year.

"The property is smaller, but it should have just as much potential (as River Valley and East Bull Lake)," says Dunbar, one of the featured speakers at the Northeastern Ontario Mineral Symposium in Sudbury last month.

"The rocks that comprise East Bull Lake, River Valley and Drury are older rocks and don't have the high copper-nickel content, but has a platinum dominant system so the major metal you're going to find in these rocks is palladium."

Dunbar says most of the indicators from the offset dykes and footwalls around the Sudbury Igneous Complex are really copper-nickel targets associated with platinum group metals.

PGMs consist of platinum, palladium, rhodium, iridium, osmium and ruthenium - six metals usually found together in nature, along with nickel and copper. They are highlyprized in the auto industry for use in catalytic converters, in electronics to coat hard drives and in the Asian jewelry market.

In 1996, Mustang gave up their search for gold in Nevada and was one of the first companies working properties for PGM exploration in the Sudbury basin.

They struck a partnership agreement with Wallbridge Mining Company for an ongoing exploration program on their 26 mining claims in Drury Township about 40 kilometres west of Sudbury. Known as the Sudbury Layered Intrusives, their two-kilometre-long target is adjacent to a claim controlled by Inco Ltd. The area was previously mined for copper and nickel around the turn of the century.

Mustang has spent $50,000 to conduct geological mapping, sampling and general geophysics and they plan to spend $10,000 to $20,000 this year for a two-month follow-up program of general geophysics over areas of interest before they begin drilling.

Besides the Drury property, Mustang also has joint-venture agreements with Falconbridge on its East Bull Lake property about 80 kilometres west of Sudbury and another with Impala Platinum Holdings of South Africa at River Valley, 60 kilometres to the east of Sudbury.