TNR Gold retracts Shotgun disclosure on website
2013-05-14 17:53 ET - News Release
Mr. Gary Schellenberg reports
TNR GOLD UPDATING WEBSITE TO CLARIFY TECHNICAL DISCLOSURE
As a result of a review by the B.C. Securities Commission, TNR Gold Corp. is issuing this news release to clarify its disclosure. Some of the information on the company's website, fact sheets and presentation materials included certain out-of-date information and disclosure of historical and other mineral resources that were not compliant with the standards of disclosure for mineral projects as set out by National Instrument 43-101 and, as a result, could be misleading.
In particular, the company's website included a historical resource estimate for the Shotgun gold project, which is no longer relevant, because on April 22, 2013, the company announced an updated inferred mineral resource. The historical resource estimate was potentially misleading because the historical estimate contained almost 250,000 ounces more gold than the current April 22, 2013, estimate, which is the only estimate that should be relied upon. The company retracts references to the historical resource for the Shotgun gold project in light of the current, updated estimate. The company's website also included certain mineral resource disclosure that was not compliant with NI 43-101 because in certain instances of disclosure related to the Shotgun gold project, it did not use the applicable categories for mineral reserve and mineral resource estimates as defined by the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum as the CIM definition standards on mineral resources and mineral reserves and adopted for the purposes of NI 43-101, failed to disclose the three acceptable categories of mineral resources (measured, indicated and inferred) separately, added inferred mineral resources to other categories, and failed to include grade. The company will be updating the Shotgun pages of its website, the Shotgun presentation and the presentation materials labelled as investor presentation to ensure that only the April 22, 2013, resource estimate is included, that any resource disclosure includes the applicable categories and that inferred mineral resources do not get added to other categories.
The lithium presentation that was included on the company's website included a historical estimate that did not include the required cautionary language about relevance and reliability and information about the key assumptions and limits in deriving the historical estimate. The lithium presentation also included a reference to a mineral resource without the grade being noted. The lithium presentation is being updated to clarify these points.
TNR's website had included certain pages and video clips wherein non-compliant NI 43-101 mineral resource estimates were disclosed for the Shotgun gold project. In an April, 2012, video that has now been removed from the TNR website, TNR disclosed a non-NI 43-101-compliant mineral resource for the Shotgun gold project and that it hoped the Shotgun project could host tens of millions of ounces. These items are non-compliant because non-NI 43-101 resources should not be disclosed, the company's exploration work on the Shotgun project was not consistent with a statement about tens of millions of ounces of gold and the company has no evidence that the Shotgun project hosts such a resource. TNR specifically retracts both of these statements made in the video and elsewhere on its website and states that they should not be relied upon. The only resource information for the Shotgun project that should be relied upon is the resource estimate outlined in the company's April 22, 2013, news release.
The company's website included an investor presentation wherein a resource estimate for the Soules Bay project in Ontario was specifically disclosed as a non-compliant NI 43-101 estimate. TNR clarifies that the estimate disclosed was in fact a historical estimate that did not include the required surrounding information and cautionary language. TNR clarifies the Soules Bay information should have been presented as follows:
The Soules Bay project occurs within the eastern Lake St. Joseph greenstone belt in the Uchi subprovince of the Superior province of the Canadian Shield. The main target area consists of a banded iron formation of considerable extent of which 12 kilometres of strike length are contained within the property limits. The on-strike extension of the iron formation, partially overlapping, adjacent and to the west of the property, has witnessed considerable exploration by Steep Rock Iron Mines Ltd. from 1957 to 1961 reporting a historical indicated reserve of 628 million tonnes averaging 23.1 per cent soluble iron yielding a concentrate averaging 67.6 per cent soluble iron signifying an 84.8-per-cent recovery at a concentration ratio of 3.4 to 1 or 29.3 weight per cent (Goodwin 1965 and Taylor et al. 1972). Soluble iron is that partial component of total iron content that is acid (that is, aqua regia) soluble. The iron in iron oxides is classified as acid soluble, whereas iron-bearing silicates represent an example of material categorized containing insoluble iron.
One of the 1957 drill holes (hole No. 2) utilized in the 1960 Steep Rock reserve calculation, situated within and proximal to the property's western boundary, reported a 94.5-metre composite sample grading 24.9 per cent soluble iron yielding a concentrate of 68.8 per cent soluble iron signifying an 82.7-per-cent recovery at a concentration ratio of 3.3 to 1 or 29.9 weight per cent.
The geology and assay results quoted herein are from various historical reports and have not been verified by the company. A qualified person, as defined in NI 43-101, has not done sufficient work to classify this historical estimate as a current mineral resources. TNR is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources, as defined in NI 43-101, and thus the historical estimate should not be relied upon. Furthermore, because no recent work has been done to evaluate the economics of the deposit, there is no guarantee that the quoted historical reserve figure is potentially economic. Economic studies done in 1960 do not mean the mineralized iron deposit would be found to be economic today. In accordance with NI 43-101, Section 2.3 (2), the reader is cautioned that the estimate of the potential quantity and grade for the deposit is conceptual in nature and that there has not been sufficient exploration in this instance to define a current mineral resource nor is there certainty that further exploration will delineate the target as a mineral resource.
The company's website had also not been updated to indicate that certain properties (that is, Blackstairs, Nevada, properties) that were formerly held by the company were spun out from TNR to International Lithium Corp. in May, 2011. The company will be updating the website to clarify which projects are currently held by the company and ensure that the information contained on the web pages dedicated to each of the company's mineral projects is accurate for the developments related to that particular mineral project.
The company would also like to clarify a statement in its April 22, 2013, news release and statements in its Shotgun presentation and investor presentation that suggest that the mineral resource estimate was prepared in compliance with NI 43-101. These statements may be misleading as NI 43-101 establishes rules on how issuers disclose mineral resources and reserves and other such technical information, but it does not provide rules for the collection of exploration information or the estimation of mineral resources, which are instead established by industry organizations such as CIM.
The company is working to update its website, fact sheets and presentation materials to ensure that all disclosure names the qualified person who prepared or supervised the preparation of the technical information contained in the particular disclosure item.