North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

KIV: TSX-V

Chairman: John Robins

CEO: James R. (Jim) Paterson

President: Jeff Ward

Kivalliq Energy Corp. spent 2011 pursuing an aggressive C$17 million exploration program targeting up to 35,000 meters of drilling in two phases on its flagship Angilak Property in central Nunavut. The junior explorer also encountered significant challenges raising capital after a pall settled over uranium stocks when an earthquake and tsunami damaged a Japanese nuclear power plant March 11.

Kivalliq was created in early 2008 when Kaminak Gold Corp. spun off its uranium assets.

It is the first company in Canada to sign a comprehensive agreement with the Inuit to explore for uranium on Inuit Owned Lands in the northern territory.

Research by Kivalliq determined that the Angilak property is host to more than 150 historic mineral showings, in addition to the historic Lac Cinquante Uranium Deposit, which is Canada's highest-grade uranium deposit outside of Saskatchewan's Athabasca Basin.

By sampling about 25 of the showings, Kivalliq confirmed historic assays, located new showings and identified several property-wide trends.

Encouraging results for uranium, silver, copper, gold and rare earth elements were obtained, which suggest that the 270,000-acre (121,033 hectares) property also has good potential for a range of other deposit types including; lode gold, IOCG and other uranium-associated mineralization.

In 2010, Kivalliq identified through prospecting nine high-priority target areas for future exploration at Angilak and began 2011 by completing a NI 43-101-compliant inferred resource estimate for Lac Cinquante of 14.15 million pounds in 810,000 metric tons averaging 0.79 percent U3O8 (at 0.2 percent cut off).

The explorer began drilling at Angilak in April with two diamond drill rigs and one reverse circulation exploratory rig, and initiated ground geophysical surveys.

The diamond drilling mainly focused on resource expansion east and west of the Lac Cinquante deposit, while RC drilling explored the Blaze Zone.

In June, Kivalliq reported high-grade uranium-copper-silver-molybdenum assays, including 1.01 percent U3O8 over 25.4 meters, from the Blaze zone.

A second phase of exploration began in July, and Kivalliq since has reported more encouraging assays from Blaze as well as core results from western and eastern extensions of the Lac Cinquante deposit.

Kivalliq's geological team considers both the Western Extension and Eastern Extension zones to be part of the same northwest-southeast trending geological structure which hosts the Lac Cinquante uranium resource.

By Aug. 25, the company had drilled 17,425 meters in 115 diamond drill holes and an additional 5,146 meters in 70 RC holes, and airborne and ground geophysical crews, as well as a prospecting crew, worked to advance the target areas defined in 2010 and generate new targets across the property. Kivalliq reported no work in 2011 on other uranium assets in Nunavut, but noted that exploration permits for the 197,797-acre (80,048 hectares) Washburn Property located on Victoria Island in Nunavut expired in January. The junior plans no further work on the property.

Cash and short-term deposits: C$15.7 million (at June 30, 2011)

Working capital: C$13.6 million (at June 30, 2011)

Market capitalization: C$49.05 million (Aug. 31, 2011)