Trading in Barkerville Gold Mines Ltd. (TSX: V.BGM, Stock Forum) was halted Tuesday after the company was hit with cease trading orders by both the British Columbia Securities Commission and the TSX Venture Exchange.
Shares of the company will remain suspended until the company files a technical report , supporting the junior’s recent disclosure of a change in mineral resources in the Cow Mountain area of the company’s Cariboo gold property in central British Columbia, the Commission said.
The move comes after the company filed a technical report for the Cariboo property on August 13 that was not prepared in the required form, the BCSC said in its cease trading order.
It did not elaborate.
Prior to the cease trade order, Barkerville shares were priced at $1.22, leaving the company with a market cap of $132.9 million, based on 109 million shares outstanding. The 52-week range for the stock is $1.78 and 31 cents.
On June 29, Barkerville issued a news release stating that Geoex Ltd. had been retained to complete an independent estimate of the mineral resources and geological potential at the Cariboo property, which is located in B.C.’s historic Barkerville mining district.
It estimated that an area encompassing about 10% of its Cariboo project hosted a “NI-43-101 compliant geological potential of 65-90 million ounces of gold. That included a NI-43-101 compliant indicated resource of 10.6 million ounces of gold in the Cow Mountain area.
That estimate sparked heavy trading in Barkerville shares, including the 10.2 million that changed hands on July 3, when the stock jumped to $1.67.
Late on August 13, the company released a technical report signed off by Peter T. George of Canmore, Alta. It noted that since the 1860s, lode gold exploration had resulted in the discovery of four significant producers in the Barkerville area, including the Aurum, Island Mountain, and Mosquito mines on Island Mountain, as well as the Cariboo Gold Quartz Mine. The latter is located to the southwest of the first three on Cow Mountain.
The report estimates that the total potential of the 4-mile long mineralized Island-Cow-Barkerville Mountain Trend is 560 to 850 million tons, grading from 0.08 to 0.11 ounces per ton, with contained gold of 40 to 90 million ounces.
The report by Geoex Ltd. said Cow Mountain has the potential to contain between 8 million and 13 million ounces of gold, material that would potentially be accessible by underground and open pit mining methods.
The Island Mountain, Cow Mountain and Barkerville areas are contiguous mountains separated by valleys , according to the Geoex report.