And Away We Go!! Buckle UP!!Claude Resources Inc. Reports Independent NI 43-101 Resource at Madsen Mine
8:30 AM ET, December 7, 2009
SASKATOON, Dec. 7, 2009 (Canada NewsWire via COMTEX) --
"Indicated Resource of 928,000 Ounces at 8.93 g/tonne and
Inferred Resource of 328,000 Ounces at 11.74 g/tonne"
Trading Symbols
TSX - CRJ
NYSE Amex - CGR
Claude Resources Inc. (TSX-CRJ; NYSE Amex-CGR) today provided anindependent mineral resource statement from its 100% owned and operatedadvanced exploration project at Madsen in Red Lake, Ontario. The 10,000acre property is equipped with a 4,125 foot shaft, 500 tonne per daymill and tailings pond, all of which are fully permitted.
The Madsen Gold Mine, located in the town of Madsen, isapproximately ten kilometers from the town of Red Lake, Ontario and isone of the highest grade gold districts in the world. The Madsen Minewas the third largest gold producer in the Red Lake camp behind theCampbell and Dickenson Mines with a total of 2.45 million ounces goldproduced over its 38 year mine life.
Claude Resources commissioned SRK Consulting (Canada) Inc. (SRK), toprepare an independent mineral resource evaluation and Technical Reportfor the Madsen Gold Mine prepared following the Canadian SecuritiesAdministrators National Instrument 43-101 guidelines. This mineralresource evaluation is based on historical exploration and mining data,Phase I underground drilling as at September 27, 2009 and geologicaland resource modeling over a period of 20 months. Resource evaluationwas undertaken in October and November 2009 for four separate zones,Austin, South Austin, McVeigh and Zone 8, that comprise the Madsen GoldMine. The mineral resource statement reported herein is the culminationof that work.
"The successful integration of our Phase I underground drilling withhistoric drilling and mining data to generate this geological model andresource estimate is a major milestone for the Madsen Project andClaude Resources," stated Brian Skanderbeg, Vice-President Exploration."Our geological understanding of the Madsen system has improvedimmensely through this process and will guide future underground andsurface exploration at Madsen and in the Red Lake belt."
Dewatering of the Madsen mine is on-going and currently 137 feetabove the 16th level. Rehabilitation of the 16th level and theestablishment of diamond drill chambers in support of Phase IIunderground drilling are expected to be completed by the second half of2010.
Table 1: Consolidated Mineral Resource Statement* for Madsen Mine,
Ontario.
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Grade
Resource Grade (oz/ Contained
Class Zone Tonnage (g/t) ton) Gold (oz)
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Indicated Austin 1,677,000 7.92 0.23 427,000
South Austin 850,000 9.32 0.27 254,000
McVeigh 374,000 9.59 0.28 115,000
Zone 8 335,000 12.21 0.36 132,000
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Total 3,236,000 8.93 0.26 928,000
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Inferred Austin 108,000 6.30 0.18 53,000
South Austin 259,000 8.45 0.25 70,000
McVeigh 104,000 6.11 0.18 20,000
Zone 8 317,000 18.14 0.53 185,000
-----------------------------------------------------------
Total 788,000 11.74 0.34 328,000
* Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have
demonstrated economic viability. All figures have been rounded to
reflect the relative accuracy of the estimates. Reported at a cut-off
grade of 5.0 g/t gold based on US$1,000 per troy ounce gold and gold
metallurgical recoveries of 94 percent.
Neil McMillan, President and CEO of Claude Resources stated, "Withthe support of a major rise in gold price, strong working capital,improving economics at our Seabee Project and a significantly expandedresource base at Madsen, Claude is well positioned to execute on itsstrategy of discovering, developing and producing gold in establishedbelts proximal to existing infrastructure."
* Footnotes to the Mineral Resource Statement:
- Mineral resources for the Madsen Gold Mine are reported at a cut-off
grade of 5.0 grams of gold per tonne considering that this material is
amenable for underground extraction, a gold price of US$1,000 per
ounce and a gold metallurgical recovery of 94 percent. Resource
numbers are rounded to reflect uncertainty. The effective date of the
mineral resource statement is November 30, 2009.
- Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have
demonstrated economic viability. There is no certainty that all or any
part of the mineral resource will be converted into mineral reserve.
The resource evaluation work was completed by a team of four resource
geologists under the supervision Glen Cole, P.Geo, a full time
employee of SRK. Mr. Cole has sufficient experience, which is relevant
to the style of mineralization and type of deposit under consideration
and to the activities undertaken to qualify as a Qualified Person as
defined by National Instrument 43-101.
- The mineral resources reported herein have been estimated in
conformity with generally accepted CIM "Estimation of Mineral Resource
and Mineral Reserves Best Practices" guidelines and are reported in
accordance with Canadian Securities Administrators' National
Instrument 43-101.
- The construction of the Madsen mineral resource model was the product
of collaboration between Claude and SRK staff. The digitization of
historical exploration and mining data was initiated in February 2008
and compiled a digital database containing 13,617 boreholes (808,350
meters), 24,582 survey, 182,197 lithology and 550,687 assay table
records that comprise the historical exploration dataset. Rigorous
quality control and validation of the historic dataset was completed
by Claude Resources. The database also includes recent drilling
information in Zone 8 to September 27, 2009. SRK audited the procedure
and visited the site and is of the opinion the data are reliable for
the purpose of resource estimation. Historical data was captured in
imperial format and then converted to metric to be consistent with
recent underground drilling data. Recent drilling in Zone 8, included
in the aforementioned numbers, as at September 27, 2009 was also
included in the resource calculation.
- The historic tonnage factor used at Madsen was 11.25 cubic feet per
ton. Limited recent specific gravity measurements available from the
Austin and Zone 8 suggest that 2.84 kg/m(3) (11.25 cubic feet per ton)
is an appropriate value to apply for the Austin, South Austin, McVeigh
and Zone 8 domains.
- SRK was engaged in March 2008 to provide ongoing technical support to
the digitization process leading to the evaluation of mineral
resources reported herein. Mineral resources were estimated using a
geostatistical block modeling approach constrained by mineralization
wireframes. Block size was set at cubes 5 meters in size except for
Zone 8 where the vertical dimension of the block was set at 2 meters.
Underground excavations were removed from modeled blocks. Block gold
grade was estimated by ordinary kriging from sourced capped composite
data. Search neighbourhood and estimation parameters were adjusted
based on variography results. Two estimation runs were completed and
grade estimates verified using other estimators. The mineral resource
model was validated visually on section by section and elevation by
elevation basis. Quantile-quantile plots comparing resource block and
capped composite data show the usual smoothing effect of kriging
particularly at higher grades, but confirm that the block model is
representative of the informing data.
- Various generations and types of intrusive material intercept the gold
mineralized zones. Uncertainty in regard to the spatial continuity of
this intrusive material has prevented its extent to be modeled in 3D.
Claude and SRK have proposed that the most accurate method of
estimating the dike volume in the resource model is to estimate the
dike percentage per resource block geostatistically. SRK has estimated
the dike percentages per resource block using a geostatistical
approach, applying the inverse distance squared estimator and search
criteria derived from variography of the dike material. Intrusive
material has been excluded from input composites with the estimated
volume removed from the final resource block estimate. SRK regard the
impact of dike material to be low in Zone 8 and consequently no
attempt was made to discount the model for dykes.
- Analysis of the cumulative probability plots for individual resource
zones determined that capping of high-grade assays to limit their
influence during grade estimation was necessary. Probability analysis
was completed on individual resource domains with capping values
ranging from 95th to 99th percentile. All available underground chip
sampling data was captured for the Zone 8.
Table 2: Capping values used for the resource domains.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Capping value Capping value
Zone Domain (g/tonne) Zone Domain (g/tonne)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Austin HG1 100 HG1 25
HG2 70 HG2 60
HG3 60 South HG3 28
HG4 16 Austin FW1 125
LG 30 FW2 30
------------------------------------
McVeigh HG1 150 Finger 12
HG2 70 Main 35
------------------------------------
LG 8 8 Zone 55
------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Historic practice at Madsen was to log the presence of visible gold
but to not sample the interval. Out of the 4,405 composite chip
samples, 318 samples were coded "VG" for "visible gold". The 3,329
samples for which the location and grade are known with confidence
were used to determine the grade to assign to the unsampled VG
intervals. The 3,329 sample subset was filtered to gold grades greater
than 1 g/tonne and based on the 85th percentile, a value of 40 g/tonne
was selected to represent all 'VG' samples.
- Historic Madsen stopes are filled with either unconsolidated waste
rock and/or unconsolidated tailings. Based on historic mining widths
and geotechnical analysis a pillar width around stopes of 15 feet for
the Austin and McVeigh, 10 feet for the South Austin and 0 feet for
the Zone 8 were utilized. Within Zone 8, ore grade and valuation were
deemed to be sufficient to justify modified mining techniques to allow
for full recovery in proximity to historic stopes.
- The impact of the following variables were assessed: resource
classification, cut-off grade, resource estimator, percent dike
modeling and size of geotechnical pillar were evaluated to support the
preparation of the Mineral Resource Statement. The mineral resources
are sensitive to the selection of the cut-off grade and the size of
the geotechnical buffer around mined out areas.
- A Technical Report supporting the Mineral Resource Statement will be
filed on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) within 45 days.