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AB Potash potential

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    AB Potash potential

    EDMONTON - Brian (Griz) Testo has been a
    dreamer and an explorer all his life. He
    recalls panning for gold in the McLeod
    River near Hinton at age eight, and
    discovering a fossil pit at 14.

    Now nearing 62, with a colourful
    background prospecting for diamonds and
    other minerals, the former pipeline
    welder is pursuing a commodity nearly
    unheard of in Alberta: potash.

    “It’s the chase, and the discovery,”
    Testo said in an interview. “My dream is
    that we hit potash and we get a new
    industry for Alberta, we make our
    shareholders a ton of money, we create
    jobs, create wealth for people, and feed
    the world.”

    Testo is president and CEO of Grizzly
    Discoveries Inc., which takes its name
    from his nickname. The Edmonton-based
    junior mining company announced this week
    it is in talks with a potential partner
    about a possible $15-million investment
    in Grizzly’s Alberta potash project.

    Grizzly’s unnamed partner, which Testo
    will only say is based outside Canada, is
    now reviewing the company’s data and
    information. If a deal results, Grizzly
    would be in a position this year to drill
    four test wells near Vermilion and
    Lloydminster.

    “If they’re interested, they’ll kick us
    $5 million, we’ll drill four wells, and
    if we hit potash in any one of those
    wells, they’ll kick in the other 10
    (million) and then we’re off to the
    races,” Testo says. “That’s my thoughts
    on the deal.”

    Next door, Saskatchewan is a world leader
    in the production of potash minerals
    mined from vast underground deposits left
    by the evaporation of an ancient inland
    sea. Saskatchewan potash products are
    sold into markets worldwide for use as
    fertilizer.

    Despite some exploration work in the
    1960s, a potash industry has never
    developed in Alberta.

    Testo wants to change that. Grizzly holds
    metallic and industrial mineral permits
    covering 364,000 hectares in two areas
    along the Saskatchewan border, one near
    Medicine Hat, the other near
    Lloydminster.

    In 2011, core samples from a test well
    Grizzly drilled near Medicine Hat
    revealed a 22-metre-thick layer of low-
    grade potash minerals about 1.6
    kilometres below ground, and also some
    smaller deposits of higher-grade potash.

    Grizzly hasn’t yet drilled near
    Lloydminster, but Testo is buoyed by a
    report he discovered online six years
    ago: in 1965, petroleum geologist Albert
    Golden suggested the potash mineral
    sylvite exists “in substantial
    quantities” in an area near Vermilion,
    195 kilometres east of Edmonton.

    Golden had studied core samples from an
    oil well — VCO No. 15 — that had been
    drilled by Vermilion Consolidated Oils in
    1945. He found mineral deposits similar
    in composition and depth to those found
    in Saskatchewan, at Unity and Saskatoon.

    “These potash deposits are now in the
    formational stages of economic mining and
    development,” Golden wrote of his Alberta
    findings. “It is feasibly possible that
    the potash in VCO No. 15 and Unity are
    one large continuous deposit.”

    In 2009, geologist Michael Dufresne,
    president of Edmonton’s APEX Geoscience
    Ltd., co-authored a preliminary
    investigation into potash potential in
    Alberta for the Alberta Geological
    Survey.

    After the publication of reports by
    Golden and others in the mid-1960s,
    Alberta saw “a flurry of potash
    activity,” Dufresne wrote. But interest
    soon waned and after 1970, “potash
    exploration in Alberta was simply
    nonexistent,” his report said.

    More recently, however, worldwide demand
    for potash has been on the rise, making
    exploration more attractive. Grizzly and
    a few other companies have staked permits
    in eastern Alberta, in large part
    influenced by the 1960s exploratory work.

    Dufresne, an independent consultant who
    is working with Grizzly on its potash
    venture, says he is “quite optimistic”
    there may one day be a potash industry on
    this side of the Alberta-Saskatchewan
    border.

    “I think there’s a good chance there’s
    probably an economic deposit somewhere,”
    he says. “I think the risk is, how big is
    it, and how many wells is it going to
    take to find it? That’s my worry.”

    Grizzly Discoveries Inc. trades on the
    TSX Venture Exchange. Share prices in the
    past 52 weeks have ranged between 1.5 and
    12 cents.
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