Claim Post Resources Inc. announced that SGS Mineral Services of Lakefield, Ontario, Canada, has successfully produced 99.3 percent pure silica sand from the Seymourville sand deposit. This high-grade silica sand deposit is located 200 km northeast of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, just off of paved Highway 304 on the east shore of Lake Winnipeg.
The Seymourville Deposit is being evaluated for use as a natural sand proppant for the oil and gas industry. As part of Claim Post’s plan to advance the Seymourville Frac Sand Project to production, 1,000 kg of sand was delivered to the SGS Lab in Lakefield from secure storage in Winnipeg. The sand from 20 sonic drill holes drilled at mainly 100- x 100-m centers was composited into a representative sample for bench scale metallurgical testwork.
The SGS testwork has shown that we can design a processing circuit that can consistently make a plus 99 percent pure silica sand that can be screened into standard frac sand size ranges. Claim Post expected that most of the finer material to be mainly clays which would be a challenge to dewater for dry disposal back into the mined out pits. There is 5 percent or less clay in the composite sample. The remaining 10 percent is fine to ultrafine silica sand that may be wet processed into saleable products without the capital, operating or environmental costs associated with fine or ultrafine grinding.
The table below shows that 83 percent of the sand/clay feed to the processing plant can be processed into frac sand size ranges. Fine grained silica products sell for at least as much as frac sand thus additional SGS testwork will be done to evaluate these products.
Claim Post President Charles Gryba stated, “We are concentrating on moving the project forward to production and de-risking the project in cost effective steps. The current SGS testwork indicates we can produce sand grading 99.3 percent SiO2 or better which is the basis of a premium Tier 1 Frac Sand. Initial API testwork by PropTester for Gossan Resources Inc. meet all API Specifications but we will independently confirm the API results using the SGS cleaned sand.”
The market for natural frac sand continues to grow at a high rate in North America (approximately 35 percent per annum) with production reaching about 42,000,000 tons in the U.S. in 2013 and an additional Canadian domestic production of about 2,500,000 tons. Claim Post’s Seymourville Frac Sand Deposit is approximately 1,000 km closer to the Canadian market than Wisconsin sand deposits; this indicates the potential for significant transportation savings in addition to the Canadian dollar differential.
Claim Post is evaluating a transload facility at the Centre Port site in Winnipeg that will provide unit train loading with access to CN, CPR and the BNSF railroads. In addition, Claim Post will provide bulk truck or container service to the oil industry in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Canada, and the U.S. side of the Williston Basin. Containers delivered to the well site are very economic within a 600-km range from the Winnipeg transload facility.