Former governor returns his roots in exploration geology

Long before he was an decorated fighter pilot, a five-term member of Congress or a governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons worked in the early 1970s as an exploration geologist.

And like many young geologists, he found that his corporate employer wasn't all that interested in the opinions of a junior guy out in the field.

Gibbons, however, is getting a second chance to test his geologic knowledge as he takes a seat on the board of directors of Vancouver-based International Enexco Ltd. He also will serve as a senior advisor to the publicly held company.

Among the company's most promising prospects in the United States and Canada is the Contact Property, where International Enexco has identified a potentially promising copper deposit.

One of the leading academic experts on the Contact District, just a couple of miles south of Jackpot along U.S. 93: Gibbons, who completed a 181-page Master's thesis on the district at the University of Nevada, Reno, Mackay School of Mines in June 1973.

His skills have grown rusty in the past three dozen years.

"I don't profess to be a geologist any more," says Gibbons, who proudly signed the Master's thesis 38 years ago as "James A. Gibbons, Geologist."

But he figures he remembers enough about geology to ask good questions as a member of the International Enexco board of directors, and he learned enough politics and government regulation during his 10 years in Congress and four years in the Governor's Mansion to help the company negotiate the approvals process.

Filings with state regulators are still a ways off.

International Enexco these days is completing a feasibility study on the property, looking at the possibility of open-pit mining with a heap-leach operation to recover copper.

The company holds a 100 percent interest in the property, and its consultants estimate it could produce 25 million pounds of copper a year.

Preliminary studies showed the property would beprofitable with copper at $2.25 a pound. Lately, it's been running about $4 a pound.

Gibbons first became interested in the Contact District the scene of sporadic mining booms since the 1870s and the scene of big-time bootlegging during Prohibition while he was working for Union Carbide Corp. as an exploration geologist.

United Carbide sent Gibbons into the field to search for tungsten deposits after he completed an undergraduate degree in geology at UNR and spent four years as an Air Force pilot with service in Vietnam.

Gibbons grew fascinated by the geology of the Contact District, which gets its name from the contact zone between granite and porphyry rock in the area. (Porphyry is a type of igneous rock that includes conspicuous large grains.)

Union Carbide executives weren't convinced that the Contact District held much promise for tungsten exploration and told Gibbons to focus his professional efforts elsewhere.

But his academic attention remained on the Contact District, and his graduate work studied how the geology of the area developed.

"Mr. Gibbons' work still stands as the principal work on the geology and exploration potential of the district," said Arnold Armstrong, the president and chief executive officer of International Enexco in announcing the appointment of Gibbons to the company's board.

The blue-bound Master's thesis, its pages typewritten and its text interspersed with photos of the geology of the Contact District, has been checked out numerous times from shelves of the mining library at UNR.

"Whenever we have questions on the geology, we go back to his thesis," says Bill Willoughby, the chief operating officer of International Enexco.

Willoughby, who heard from a friend of a friend that Gibbons was looking to get back into the mining business after his term as governor, called him out of the blue one day to gauge his interest in joining the International Enexco board.

They spent a day tromping around out in the field, where Gibbons learned about the 230,000 feet of exploration drilling that's been conducted on the property since he completed his thesis. International Enexco alone has invested in 156 exploratory holes in the past four years.

And Willoughby says the company continues to look at the potential of deeper deposits on the property deposits that first were outlined by Gibbons in his academic research.