Research Statement
NI 43-101 reports are comprehensive geologic assessments of prospective mineral properties or deposits 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 prospective mineral and mining properties. NI 43-101 reports are publicly available through SEDAR.
This project has made more NI 43-101 reports easier to find by adding missing and 2019–2021 reports to the metadata and spatial databases from the initial Georeferencing and Data Capture of NI 43-101 Reports in British Columbia project.
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 a company’s provincial or territorial securities commission.
NI 43-101 reports contain comprehensive scientific and technical overviews of mineral projects including activities such as drilling, sample analyses, mapping, significant findings and more. NI 43-101 reports dating back to 2004 are freely available through SEDAR and can be searched by company name, document type, industry group or filing date. However, currently, SEDAR cannot be searched by location or geologic information.
This project extracted location and mineral inventory information from NI 43-101 reports for BC from 2019 to 2021, as well as sourcing and adding additional data from 2004 to 2019 that was not identified in the previous phase of this work (Project 2018-029). This project has made the data more easily accessible and searchable for users, including geologists, Indigenous groups, governments and academia.
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 NI 43-101 technical reports issued between September 2019 and September 2021 in BC and add to the existing dataset;
- Capture metadata and make publicly available as a geospatial layer; and,
- Update mineral occurrences for the BCGS’s MINFILE database from the NI 43-101 reports.
Benefits
Public data that cannot be accessed easily does not get reused and reconsidered by later projects. By making the already public NI 43-101 reports 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 leads to more informed mineral exploration decisions in BC.
What Was Found
In reviewing 14,137 NI 43-101 reports, 1,262 reports related to BC properties between 2004 and 2021 were found. Of these, 62 reports prior to 2019 had been missed during the previous phase of the project (Project 2018-029) and 204 new reports existed between 2019 and 2021. The reports were distributed throughout the province with the biggest concentrations being in areas of active exploration (e.g. the ‘Golden Triangle’ area in BC’s Northwest Region).
These reports have been added to Geoscience BC’s Earth Science Viewer and the British Columbia Geological Survey’s (BCGS) MapPlace2 platform, where users can view the locations and metadata of NI 43-101 reports.
In cross-referencing NI 43-101 reports with MINFILE occurrences, the team identified 1,585 MINFILE records that had to be created (65) or modified (1,520). Combined with the previous project that analyzed data before September 2019, this takes the total number of MINFILE occurrences added or updated to 4,376. The NI 43-101 reports were used to update or rewrite many of these occurrences to provide in-depth exploration histories, including significant sampling results along with geophysical and geochemical anomalies, new or revised zones of mineralization, physical workings including underground development and new or updated mineral resources and/or reserves. The MINFILE occurrence descriptions can be accessed through the MINFILE online portal.
In addition, the project added direct URL links from the location data to all existing technical reports on SEDAR. This was not possible in the past due to limitations of the SEDAR website.