Stockwatch Gold Summary-Excerpt Jeffrey Pontius's Corvus Gold Inc. (KOR) jumped 41 cents to $3.84 on 575,000 shares on word that it has drilled a 44-metre interval averaging 0.9 gram of gold per tonne in a discovery hole at its Lynnda Strip target, a feature 2.5 kilometres north of its Mother Lode project in Nevada. The interval was bolstered by a three-metre interval averaging 5.52 grams of gold per tonne. As well, there was a shallower, lower-grade zone that averaged 0.44 gram per tonne over 196.6 metres.
Mr. Pontius, president and chief executive officer, cheered the result from the company's "ongoing new discovery exploration work" across the "re-emerging" Bullfrog district. He adds that the initial Lynnda Strip results "suggest that the system could be amenable to open-pit mining and heap-leach processing." (Given the low grades, it will have to be.) For now, the promotional skies over Lynnda Strip are blue, and Mr. Pontius says that Corvus is "continuing with the evaluation of this exciting new discovery and the value it can bring to our shareholders." (As with most discoveries, the value arrived with the news, as Corvus briefly topped $4 this morning. Getting the value to stick will be the challenge.)
Corvus's continued exploration near Mother Lode and nearby North Bullfrog suggest that it is not yet content with the economics of those projects as laid out in a now two-year-old preliminary economic assessment. That dream sheet proposed a $424-million (U.S.) mine and mill that would operate at nearly 82,000 tonnes per day, thanks to a large but low-grade resource estimate.
At last report, the combined Mother Lode and North Bullfrog deposits held 184 million tonnes measured and indicated at 0.25 gram of oxide gold per tonne and 78.7 million more tonnes inferred at 0.26 gram per tonne, about two million ounces deemed to be heap-leachable and open-pittable rock. Another 27.6 million tonnes of mainly sulphide ore -- needing milling -- are indicated at 1.65 grams per tonne, with 2.3 million tonnes inferred at 1.61 grams per tonne, for another 1.58 million ounces