Excerpt from Stockwatch Gold-Today The resource sector slumbered on through the shortest and quietest week of the year, but Eric Jones's Thunder Mountain Gold Inc. (THM) was nevertheless the recipient of some bad news today. John Wilton's Bemetals Corp. (BMET) says it is terminating its option to acquire the South Mountain project in southwestern Idaho from Thunder Mountain. Bemetals, up one-half cent to 12.5 cents on 131,000 shares today, acquired the option nearly four years ago, but with a hefty final payment coming due at the end of this year, the company has elected to refocus its efforts elsewhere.
Mr. Wilton, president and chief executive officer of Bemetals, offered South Mountain a cheerful bon voyage, applauding the "numerous advancements in mining and metallurgical studies" that his company had contributed to the project over the past few years, along with a "significant expansion" in the resource estimate. And so, he suggests, the decision to drop the option is not the result of exploration disappointment or a looming $10-million (U.S.) payment -- no, not at all -- it is merely because he and his crew wish to "focus exploration funding on other projects" such as the Kato gold prospect in Japan and the Pangeni copper project in Zambia.
Thunder Mountain had nothing to say today, nor did the market. In fact, the company's stock has not traded in over two weeks, when it slid 3.5 cents to 2.5 cents on a paltry 10,000 shares. A week earlier, Thunder Mountain had shed six cents to six cents on another 10,000 shares. Indeed, shareholders looking to liquidate a significant holding of Thunder Mountain appear out of luck, as the company's stock chart has for years looked like a series of dark flyspecks on a white sheet of paper -- and from a constipated fly at that.
Thunder Mountain does get back a project with a larger -- but nevertheless still puny -- resource, as Bemetals credited South Mountain with 187,650 tonnes measured and indicated at 2.19 grams of gold and 151 grams of silver per tonne, plus 9.63 per cent zinc, 1.01 per cent lead and 0.63 per cent copper. Another 756,300 tonnes were inferred at somewhat lesser grades. In all, South Mountain hosts less than 50,000 ounces of gold and 5.7 million ounces of silver, meagre amounts padded only somewhat by the 75,000 tonnes of zinc and 7,300 tonnes of copper deemed present.
And the new focus? Well, Bemetals has been focused on Kato, which it acquired in early 2021, for several months now. In April, Bemetals began a 1,500-metre drill program on the project and assays have since yielded encouragement. In July, the company cheered an 11.5-metre hit that averaged 6.42 grams of gold per tonne, an encounter aided by a 4.52-metre stretch that ran 11.88 grams per tonne.
Assays from a second hole came available in September. That test averaged 3.06 grams of gold per tonne over 26.1 metres, with a 10.2-metre stretch averaging 4.88 grams per tonne. The new hit extended the strike length of the Seta vein another 100 metres, and that was enough, the company enthused, to tack on an additional 500 metres of drilling to the program.