Article on Au stocks (MOZ) included New York spot gold fell another $13.80 to $1,697.60 on Thursday. The TSX-V tagged along with an 11.27-point decline to 627.14 while the TSX gold index lost 5.15 points to 218.52. Most Canadian gold miners moved lower today. New Gold Inc. (NGD) -- this was a $12 stock a decade ago and it topped $2.50 in February, remember -- fell three cents to 82 cents on 2.15 million shares. Endeavour Mining PLC (EDV) fell 99 cents to $24.57 on 1.38 million shares.
Today might not have been the best of days to roll out the first assays in a month from your 14-rig drill program. Collin Kettell and Eric Sprott's New Found Gold Corp. (NFG), $13.50 in mid-2021, fell 19 cents to $4.54 on 261,000 shares today on word it has drilled a 5.75-metre interval averaging 18.95 grams of gold per tonne in one of 17 new holes at its Queensway project in north-central Newfoundland.
While the grades and intervals fell well short of the bonanza-grade encounters scored in the spring of 2021, the latest holes tested new areas of interest along the Appleton Fault zone at Queensway. The headline hit came from the Enigma zone, at a site 65 metres northeast of where the company drilled a 2.15-metre interval averaging 275 grams of gold per tonne in May just beyond the north end of the prolific Keats zone.
Melissa Render, the company's vice-president of exploration, offered her usual geological monologue to cheer the results, although perhaps she has been attending promoterese-as-a-second-language classes, as she sprinkled bits of plain-speak into her spiel. She and her crew are "very encouraged" by the recent discovery of mineralized veins across an area 630 metres by 150 metres at Keats North, and they are zeroing in on the Umbra and Penumbra fault zones as areas playing a role in producing the spectacular grades found at the north end of Keats.
"This area is certainly lighting up with a high success rate in hitting gold mineralization in veining," Ms. Render enthuses, adding that the zones are showing excellent geological continuity, are open in all directions and remain sparsely drilled. Accordingly, she adds, "we are trying to assess an area with a footprint similar to Keats itself," concluding that Keats North "provides further confirmation of our big-picture exploration thesis."
Another Newfoundland gold project got good -- but expected -- news today. George Faught and Matt Manson's Marathon Gold Corp. (MOZ) lost 31 cents to $1.38 on 4.67 million shares on word that it has formally decided to build a big gold mine at Valentine Lake. The new mine, says Mr. Manson, president and chief executive officer, will cost between $470-million and $490-million to build.
Cost what, you blurt? Yes, the company's feasibility study, prepared in the spring of 2021, put the capital cost at just $305-million, but Mr. Manson and his crew now say that the new estimate includes about 20 months of market inflation -- yikes! -- as well as the reallocation of some sustaining costs as preproduction costs and the extension of the time-to-complete to 28 months from 22 months.
Indeed, it may be best to forget the feasibility study, as it was completed before Marathon Gold understood the extent of its new Berry zone, one of five deposits at Valentine Lake.
Not to worry, Mr. Bureaucrat, the company is proceeding with the mine plan laid out in its environmental assessments and permitting, a plan based on open-pits at the Marathon and Leprechaun deposits, currently listed with a reserve of 2.05 million ounces. Once built, however, Mr. Manson and his crew are looking to add Berry and its resource of 1.35 million ounces as a possible third pit.
Quentin Yarie's Red Pine Exploration Inc. (RPX) rose one-quarter cent to 26.5 cents on 20,000 shares on word that it has drilled a 3.93-metre true-width interval averaging 17.49 grams of gold per tonne in the Minto Mine South area of its Wawa gold project in Northern Ontario. Most of the gold came from two narrow intervals, spanning about 0.65 metre each and averaging about 50 grams per tonne. The other 2.62 metres therefore graded just 1.17 grams per tonne.
Mr. Yarie, president and CEO, applauded the assays from this new hole as demonstrating that the current Minto Mine resource is "likely of higher grade than currently calculated," as the increased drilling density is "mitigating the nugget effect we are conscious of." Accordingly, Mr. Yarie concludes, the high-grade Minto mineralization "could very well become an exciting focal point for Red Pine."
The current focal point at Wawa is the Surluga deposit, where Red Pine lists 1.2 million tonnes indicated at 5.31 grams per tonne and 2.36 million tonnes inferred at 5.22 grams per tonne, a total of 600,000 ounces. At Minto Mine South, it lists 105,000 tonnes indicated at 7.5 grams per tonne and 354,000 tonnes inferred at 6.6 grams per tonne. That is just 100,000 ounces, but the new assays and more drilling will help Mr. Yarie refocus his excitement.