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Northstar Gold Corp. (CSE:NSG, OTC Pink:NSGCF, FSE:3WV,Forum), a company focused on the exploration, development and acquisition of quality exploration properties, is looking to join the ranks of gold producers in the province.
The Company’s flagship property is its 100% owned Miller Gold Property, located 18 kilometres southeast of Kirkland Lake, Ontario.
Stockhouse Editorial’s Jocelyn Aspa recently caught up with Northstar Gold Corp. CEO Brian Fowler to discuss the company’s flagship property and its ongoing drilling program in addition to future milestones investors can watch out for.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW
SH: Can we first start off by you providing us with a brief overview of yourself and the company?
BF: Certainly, I'm a geologist, I've seen pretty much all aspects of copper, gold, silver, lead, zinc exploration for over 40 years. A number of those years I worked for Placer Dome, which was, at that time, one of the three largest gold exploration, development and mining companies in the world. So I got to see a fair bit, it was an excellent school of mines, and more recently in my career I've worked in the junior sector helping companies go public and developing companies, and exploration concepts and proposals.
SH: Yeah, absolutely. So Northstar Gold's flagship property is the Miller Gold Property. And the company recently began drilling at the Kirkland Lake area within the property. What is the company hoping to achieve out of this drilling program?
BF: Well, I'll give you a bit of a background on the Miller Gold Property. The Kirkland Lake District is very, very special as it's produced over 25 million ounces of gold coming from seven mines over this past century. So it's a great address.
The Miller Property is situated, as you mentioned, 18 kilometers southeast of Kirkland Lake and it shares a number of very important geological similarities with the gold deposits in the Camp. If I could touch on those, that includes the style of mineralization, which is gold-tellurides, a high-grade style of mineralization.
The rock types in the Miller Property are the same age as the rock types in the Kirkland Camp. And the age of gold mineralization has been dated the same, most important what ties it all together is that all of the deposits in the Kirkland camp are situated on or near the main Kirkland-Larder Break. The Miller Property is situated on what's called the Catharine Fault. These are big fault structures that extend down deep into the mantle. These structures effectively source and channel gold forming fluids upwards through the crust. They are all interconnected and all these similarities with Miller and Kirkland bode very, very well for us. This is highly suggestive that mineralization and gold on the Miller property is tapping the same source as the Kirkland Camp.
That's very important. The exploration that's been done to date on Miller has not been that deep, but has returned very encouraging results and style of mineralization, and it shows the possibility of a large Kirkland-style mineralizing system occurring on the Miller property.
SH: Absolutely. So Northstar Gold just announced results of the first half of the phase two drilling program at the Miller Gold Property. Can you walk us through these results a little bit and what some of the major highlights were?
BF: We followed up last year’s program with Phase 2A drilling. We just completed 2000 meters of drilling in eight holes on the Miller Property. These were designed to follow up results, significant results that we achieved with the 5,000-meter drill program in 2020 that resulted in the discovery of what we call the Allied Syenite Gold Zone, which is central to the Property. We had a couple of holes last year that averaged 1.2 – 1.4 grams over a hundred plus metres, 180 meters apart, either side of the syenite. These results indicated that there is a presence of a large, and presently open, near-surface, bulk tonnage gold system on the Property.
So this year with eight holes, we had two holes that followed up on one important hole. We stepped out on the West side of the intrusion 40 meters north and south of hole 47. We had some pretty spectacular initial results which I will discuss shortly. We also drilled two holes on the historic No. 1 Vein. It's a vein in the southern reaches of the Property that actually is host to a historic estimate that was calculated in 1987 suggestive of 270,000 ounces of gold at 11.5 grams per ton of gold.
We don't own all of that ground that overlays that historic estimate, but we own the lion's share of it. Also in 2020 we conducted a fairly extensive geophysics and interpretive program that identified a number of other additional targets that we are testing. So we tested outside targets as well followed up the previous Allied Syenite discovery with Phase IIA drilling.
SH: So following this phase of the drilling program, what will the company's next steps be?
BF: We're waiting on assay results. I should touch on the results received so far. In one of the holes, hole MG21-56 we intersected a couple of spectacular intercepts, and I encourage your listeners to go to the website or check the links in our last news release. We intersected 193 grams per tonne gold over 0.6 meters, just 14.5 metres below surface, which was a very pleasant surprise in the syenite. Further down this hole we intersected 1,010 grams per ton of gold over 0.5 metres with some very impressive visible gold and gold tellurides. We recognized this as very significant and took immediate action to sample, analyze and get the results back on a rush basis.
This is very encouraging. We had an exceptional market reaction to these preliminary results, as you'd expect. But this is just the beginning. These are the only assays that we've got so far. We drilled eight holes, the core has been processed and logged and all samples are in the lab for assay. We will report results as they come available. It's frustrating and we're not alone in the industry-wide delay and complications for assays, with COVID and everything else. We just ask investors to be patient and allow us the time to announce all the results, which are forthcoming.
When we do get all of our results, that's going to help us formulate our next phase of exploration, which we plan on undertaking - a resumed drill program in June - with upwards to 3000 meters of additional drilling to follow up these significant drilling results.
SH: Just last month, Northstar gold announced that it had applied to list on the OTCQB, as well as DTC eligibility. What will this mean for the company?
BF: Well, it certainly broadens the opportunity for American investors to invest in the company and that increases our exposure. So we're very excited about that. The application is well underway. I'm hoping that we'll have our application and our listing by the end of the month. Don't hold me on that, but everything is going in that direction.
SH: Of course, absolutely. So although the Miller gold property is the company's flagship property, can you tell us anything notable about Northstar Gold’s other projects?
BF: Certainly. Northstar is much more than Miller. Just late last year, we more than doubled their property size in the Miller area by acquiring the adjacent Rosegrove property. It's situated near the same Catherine Fault structure, just Northwest long trend of the Miller Property, effectively doubling our land position in the area. It's a much earlier stage exploration property and has a lot of glacial overburden, so conventional exploration is much more difficult, but it's a key acquisition for us. And it occupies very prospective ground. We'll be flying a UAV magnetic survey over the Property this year.
About 35 kilometers southwest, we've got what's called the Bryce Property. It's 100% owned as well. In the mid 2000’s, Northstar spent almost $4 million in exploration drill and drilled over 20,000 meters on a large intrusive hosted gold, precious metal enriched VMS system situated on the Ridout Break, east of the Juby gold deposit. Bryce has some very interesting results, 80 meters of a gram+ gold intercepts. And then some smaller, higher grade precious metal rich intercepts. We're in the process of putting a 43-101 report around it, validating, all the data. We'll be spending a couple of hundred thousand dollars on it this year, doing some mapping and sampling where some recent logging on the property has exposed new mineralized structures.
And lastly, we have the Milestone Copper Nickel Cobalt Property. It's in the Temagami Lake area. Again, it's a 100% owned and about 600 hectares in size. The Property, is an old Teck Property with the Historic Diadem deposit. We're not in the copper-nickel cobalt space, so we're actively looking to farm it out, optioning it to a worthy group that has the means to advance it, and monetize it in that way. So that's Northstar’s portfolio.
SH: Of course. What is Northstar Gold's business model and how does it make money?
BF: We are a public company and making money as a public company is not easy, but the modus operandi is to identify, acquire and advance quality exploration projects; in North Star’s case, mostly gold to an early resource stage. And by doing that, increasing shareholder value. The better you are at that, the higher your share price goes and it becomes easier for you to raise capital because the primary means of raising capital as a public company is by way of private placements where you're doing public share offerings. If you're doing it right, your share price is increasing, you're getting results that are recognized by the market, and future financings are done at a higher price which minimizes dilution. So that's our business model, it's no different than all of our peers, I just like to think that we're going to excel and do very well at it.
SH: So moving into the rest of 2021, are there any other milestones, Northstar goal has lined up that investors might want to watch out for?
BF: Well, we're anxiously awaiting the results of this drill program and they will be key for continued exploration. We are funded to undertake a next phase of drilling.
We are trying to broaden our exposure and make the market aware of Northstar and demonstrate the quality of our assets. We're focused on Miller and open to monetizing assets in the best way possible. We're also actively looking at all our properties in terms of expansion potential, acquiring adjacent ground and looking at opportunities. We've got our ear to the ground and that's it in a nutshell, that's our plan going forward.
SH: Definitely, lots to watch out for this year. If there's anything else that I might've overlooked please feel free to elaborate.
BF: I guess one final thing is that in regards to the Kirkland District, a very positive recent development was an announcement by Orefinders and Mistango Exploration about a deal that they had made with Kirkland Lake Gold. Now this is a pretty awesome deal in that it provides Kirkland Lake the opportunity to take up to 9.9% of the ownership of these companies by way of a share purchase, but also Mistango and Orefinders have very large ground positions in the Kirkland District. And this agreement, this deal that was announced last week provides Kirkland the opportunity to earn up to 75% interest in select properties by expanding $60 million in exploration.
So we're pretty pleased to see this considering that our Miller property is adjacent to Orefinders’ Mirado Property. And we're also very pleased to see that the majors like Kirkland Lake Gold are actively looking down the road, they're looking at their future mill feed requirements and they're actively expanding and broadening their reach. So we take that as a very, very positive move and we're looking forward to further consolidation developments ahead.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.