Hott off the webbsite, so to speak.
From Charles Wyatt's minesite.com
INTERNATIONAL FREEGOLD OFFERS AN EACH WAY BET ON GOLD AND PLATINUM.
A week or two back Pacific Northwest caused some ripples, nay waves, in the Canadian investment community with its announcement of drilling results from the River Valley are near Sudbury. Analysts burned the midnight oil over computer models and a number of them reckoned that on the evidence of only three holes the prospect had the potential to host over 50 million tonnes of mineralised rock grading 1.5 to 2.0 g/t PGM which could translate into a potential open pit deposit hosting around 3 million ozs PGM.
Their gung-ho attitude may have been derived in part from the knowledge that Anglo American, the world's largest producer of platinum, was farming in on the area and would earn over 50 per cent by carrying Pacific Northwest on the exploration programme. Now, however, comes new proof of the degree of confidence in the venture as both CanAlaska Ventures and International FreeGold, companies from the same stable as Pacific Northwest with Harry Barr as chairman, are negotiating on properties in the area.
For such an announcement to be made at this stage it can safely be assumed that the deals are cut and dried, confirms Colin Bird, the managing director of Lion Mining Finance in London who is a director of International Freegold. The view from Canada is that when the dust settles it will be Harry Barr's companies that turn out to have the lion's share of exploration claims around the original discovery. Sudbury , it should be remembered, is the home of giant nickel producers Inco and Falconbridge and PGMs have traditionally been produced as a by-product.
International Freegold has also signed on exploration option agreement with Ahtna Minerals to acquire a development lease on the Tonsina PGM property in South Central Alaska. This property covers a ten mile strike length of the Tonsina complex where heavy mineral concentrates collected by the US Bureau of Mines returned combined platinum and palladium values up to 21 g/t and the geological setting is similar to the recently discovered PGM occurrences in North America.
There is more to International Freegold than just a trendy PGM exploration portfolio. In Idaho it has earned a 60 per cent interest in the Almaden gold project which has had a feasibility study carried out on it, but now awaits a rise in the gold price. Even more interesting, it has the Golden Summit project in Alaska and the nearby Vanguard land package. Placer and lode gold mining has taken place in the area since the gold rush days in 1902 and the results from recent exploration work have been sufficiently encouraging for Barrick to come in as a partner. This combination of gold and PGM in the International Freegold portfolio makes it a company worth watching.
2 May 2000 |
