Research Statement
NI 43-101 technical reports are comprehensive geologic assessments of prospective mineral properties prepared to ensure erroneous or misleading information is not published or promoted to investors on stock exchanges overseen by the CSA. Independent qualified persons compile NI 43-101 reports to disclose all known geological work, assessments and findings on mineral and mining properties.
NI 43-101 technical reports are publicly available through the SEDAR (System for Electronic Document Analysis and Retrieval) system. SEDAR is used for electronically filing most securities related information (including mineral exploration projects) with the Canadian securities regulatory authorities.
This project made NI 43-101 reports easier to find by creating a public metadata and a spatial database for reports submitted for mineral exploration in BC between August 2004 and September 2019.
Situation
Mineral exploration, development projects and operating mines are required to follow specific guidelines for disclosure set out in the NI 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects. These regulations outline when an independent qualified person should file an NI 43-101 technical report with the companies’ provincial or territorial securities commission.
An NI 43-101 technical report contains a comprehensive scientific and technical overview about mineral projects including activities such as drilling, sample analyses, mapping, significant findings and more. NI 43-101 technical reports dating back to 1997 are freely available through SEDAR and can be searched by company name, document type, industry group or filing date. However SEDAR cannot be searched by location or geologic information.
This project extracted the location and mineral inventory information from NI 43-101 technical reports for BC and set up a new database so geologists can view the information in a Geographic Information System platform (GIS) such as Geoscience BC’s Earth Science Viewer and the BCGS’ MapPlace 2.
Goals
This project fits under Geoscience BC’s Strategic Objective of ‘Advancing Science & Innovative Geoscience Technologies’ and our goal to:
- Support the preservation and curation of significant geological rock suites, core samples, archived government and museum samples, data and other important materials that form reference or historical records to complement efforts of other organizations.
The specific aims of the project were to:
- Identify and georeference hundreds of BC specific NI 43-101 technical reports;
- Capture metadata and make publicly available as a geospatial layer; and,
- Update mineral occurrences for the BCGS’s MINFILE database based on data mined from the NI 43-101 technical reports.
Benefits
Data that cannot be accessed easily does not get used. By making public NI 43-101 technical report information easier to find, it is easier to use as part of new and ongoing mineral exploration work. This makes mineral exploration research more efficient and effective, and will lead to more informed mineral exploration decisions in BC.
What Was Found?
The research team obtained 12,790 NI 43-101 technical reports from the CSA dated between August 2004 and September 2019, and determined that 996 of these reports relate to properties in BC. Within these reports, the team identified approximately 7,900 ‘links’ between NI 43-101 reports and new or existing MINFILE occurrences. A ‘link’ is a connection between a MINFILE occurrence and a NI 43-101 report, as some MINFILE occurrences refer to multiple NI 43-101 reports, and vice versa.
Using this information, the team updated 2,763 MINFILE occurrences across the province with new details from NI 43-101 reports, including adding 82 occurrences of mineralization that were not previously recorded in MINFILE.