Pershing Gold has announced increased, NI 43-101-compliant resource estimates for its Relief Canyon project in Pershing County, Nevada. Measured and indicated resources now total 739,000 oz, up from 552,000 oz reported in March 2014, while inferred resources total 70,000 oz.
Pershing’s ongoing 2015 drilling program is planned to include 100 core holes and nearly 23,000 m of drilling. As of July 6, the company had two core rigs drilling on site and expected to add two more within a week. One of the added rigs was scheduled to work on the Buffalo Pediment, an exploration target located approximately 1.5 miles north of existing open pits.
The previously mined Relief Canyon project includes three open pits and a state-of-the-art, fully permitted and constructed heap-leach processing facility. The project is permitted to resume mining under an existing plan of operations.
With the completion of the upgraded resources, Pershing plans to conduct a thorough economic study of Relief Canyon redevelopment, including estimates of production rates, cash costs, all-in sustaining costs, life-of-mine, net asset value estimates, and other key metrics. The mine plan supporting this study will include all measured and indicated ounces and inferred ounces in the southwest stockpile. The company plans to consider the timing of a startup decision at Relief Canyon based on this economic study.
Iamgold has provided updates of ongoing exploration programs at its optioned Monster Lake project 50 km southwest of Chibougamau, Quebec, Canada, and its wholly-owned Pitangui gold project in Brazil.
At Monster Lake, a 2015 winter drilling program totaling 7,782 m in 21 diamond drill holes was designed to evaluate priority targets and take advantage of winter access conditions. High-grade intercepts included 1.46 m grading 18.80 g/mt gold and 1.39 m grading 7.25 g/mt gold. A summer exploration program is currently in progress, continuing the evaluation of Monster Lake’s 325-Megane zone and its possible extensions, as well as exploring other identified structures on which little previous exploration has been completed.
Iamgold has met its first year’s commitments under the terms of its Monster Lake earn-in option agreement with TomaGold. It can earn a 50% interest in the project by completing scheduled cash payments and exploration expenditures totaling $17.6 million over 5.5 years.
At Pitangui, Iamgold has completed 61 drill holes totaling 22,406 m on the São Sebastião deposit as part of an ongoing delineation drilling program initiated in 2014. Results confirm the continuity of the targeted zones and have intersected thicker intervals of high-grade mineralization. Intercepts have included 7.38 m grading 8.12 g/mt gold and 7.16 m grading 9.78 g/mt gold.
Ongoing exploration will now focus on the follow up of conductive targets identified from a 660-line-km heli-borne VTEM survey completed in late 2014. These targets are similar to the conductive anomaly associated with the São Sebastião deposit and will be prioritized for evaluation in future drilling programs.
