Freeport Earn-In Agreement for Todd Creek from ArcWestThis is another move by a major mining company in the GT at a really attractive price since ArcWest has been very depressed. They have committed to up to $50 million in exploration with $1.65 million to ArcWest for up to 80% of Todd Creek.
The Todd Creek claims are large and relatively close to Treaty Creek, on the other side of Newcrest's Brucejack land. However, they are very underexplored, have no resources defined and are not nearly at the same level as the Tudor,Teuton, Goldstorm Metals or Seabridge claims that would be more expensive to JV or option. So we still seem to be in that time period where the big boys are playing around with low-cost long shots, taking advantage of the more distressed exploration companies, with the obvious exception of Newcrest which has jumped in and taken some of the highest quality projects and is clearly winning on all of them.
That said, I think time is running out for this approach. Claims are quickly becoming more scarce. Goliath is gobbling up huge sections of land south of Red Mountain. Scottie is hitting very nice grades at Blueberry. Skeena is moving forward at Eskay. Newcrest continues to hit bonanza grades in the VOK area on a regular basis. Ascot has its financing and could pour its first gold about a year from now. From my perspective it's almost cringe-worthy to see Newcrest take such huge grades and tonnage right out from under the noses of the entire rest of the sector. Even Newmont, which spent some money on GTT - the best they could do was make a stink bid for Newcrest.
As far as Tudor is concerned, they are about to enter a drill season in which they will begin to explore at the point where they were hitting the highest grades last year. Which means the coming resource estimates, likely at >1g/t AuEq, will be almost instantly outdated after a few months of drilling more high grade copper, gold and silver.
Every year the large miners play tippy-toe around the edges of the GT they risk more of the big misses that they've already experienced at the hands of Newcrest. And by risk, I mean if Tudor does hit something like VOK by the STF/Brucejack Fault intersection, they will need to pay Pretium-like money to get it. That would actually be quite nice.
Freeport Todd Creek Earn-in Agreement with ArcWest