Goldcorp takes stake in Independence GoldPOSTED BY: LESLEY STOKES JUNE 23, 2016 VANCOUVER — Thumbing through a feasibility report on Kaminak Gold’s (TSXV: KAM; US-OTC: KMKGF) Coffee gold project, it’s easy to see why Goldcorp (TSX: G; NYSE: GG) — just six weeks after announcing its $520-million takeover of Kaminak — decided to scoop up a 19.9% position in junior explorer Independence Gold (TSXV: IGO).
The Vancouver-based junior holds the 185 sq. km Boulevard gold property, which is referenced in the Kaminak report as hosting mineralization that’s likely the next-of-kin to Coffee’s multi-million oz., structurally-controlled gold deposit.
Boulevard falls along the western edge of Kaminak’s land holdings and is 135 km south of Dawson City in the Yukon Territory — a historic placer mining town in the heart of the Klondike gold fields.
“Goldcorp looked at our land holdings and recognized the property’s potential to host a similar discovery to Coffee,” Randy Turner, Independence Gold’s president and CEO, told The Northern Miner. “We’re pleased to welcome Goldcorp as our shareholder and we see their investment as a validation of our exploration results.”
Under the terms of the private placement, Goldcorp plans to inject $2 million into the junior explorer in exchange for 10.9 million flow-through shares, which would bring the company’s working capital up to $7 million, Turner says in an interview.
Exploration on the property has outlined two zones of structurally-hosted gold: the Sunrise-Sunset and Denali, located 8 km southwest and 8 km west, respectively, of the Coffee project.
The Denali zone is marked by a distinct gold- and arsenic-in-soil anomaly measuring 700 metres long, and the Sunrise-Sunset has a similar V-shaped anomaly with one side measuring 1.5 km long and the other measuring 1 km long.
Last year, exploration focused on the Sunrise-Sunset gold zone, where reverse circulation (RC) drilling returned 3.1 metres of 15 grams per tonne gold and 4.6 metres of 1.63 grams gold. The program was designed to follow up on an earlier intercept of 12.2 metres of 7.23 grams gold.
This year, the company plans to drill 1,500 metres of RC at Denali, where previous drill intercepts returned 3.1 metres of 3.33 grams gold and 6.1 metres of 4.25 grams gold.
It has also budgeted 2,000 metres of rotary air blast drilling on a variety of its other greenfield projects in the district, along with trenching, mapping and soil sampling. The total cost of the program is $1.5 million.
Kendra Johnston, head of corporate development for Independence, explained during a phone interview that the drill program at Denali aims to “address some unanswered questions” about the controls to mineralization.
The prospect falls along strike of a westerly-trending array of structures related to the Big Creek-Coffee Creek fault system that also hosts Coffee’s Latte and Double Double deposits, and its Americano and Americano West prospects.
“We’ve mapped structures to the edge of our property and you can easily draw a dotted line to where Kaminak had mapped theirs,” she says. “But the difference is that Coffee is hosted primarily within felsic gneisses and schists, whereas mineralization at our property is found entirely in the schists, so the rheological controls that drove and concentrated the gold wouldn’t necessarily be the same.”
According to Kaminak’s feasibility study, gold-rich fluids powered through the westerly-trending fault system and dropped much of its base-metal and silica content at Boulevard before migrating upwards into Coffee’s domain.
The fluids veered off into a series of northerly-trending, strike-slip fault splays and precipitated gold. The splays host the bulk of Coffee’s resource, which stands at 63.7 million indicated tonnes averaging 1.45 grams gold for 3 million oz. gold, and 52.4 million inferred tonnes of 1.31 grams gold for another 2.2 million oz. gold.
According to geochronological studies, the mineralization occurred sometime during the mid-Cretaceous period — almost 100 million years after a separate gold event that’s been linked to the 20 million oz. of placer gold dredged out of the Klondike gold fields.
The only significant hard-rock deposit related to the early event is Kinross Gold’s (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) Golden Saddle deposit, 95 km south of Dawson City, which contains 9.8 million inferred tonnes of 2.67 grams gold for 840,000 oz. gold.
“When Golden Saddle was discovered and gold hit US$1,800 an oz., everyone loved the Yukon,” Turner said in closing. “Now, with the price of gold moving back and Kaminak being taken over by Goldcorp, everyone loves the Yukon again. It’s a great mining jurisdiction with a lot of discovery potential.”