NovaGold Resources Inc. and SpectrumGold Inc.: Galore Creek High Grade Zones Confirmed and Overall Resource Expanded
Wednesday May 5, 9:02 am ET
biz.yahoo.com
Excerpt:
VANCOUVER, British Columbia--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 5, 2004--NovaGold Resources Inc. (AMEX:NG - News; TSX:NG - News) and its subsidiary SpectrumGold Inc. (TSX:SGX - News) have completed an updated resource estimate for the Galore Creek gold-silver-copper project located in Northwestern British Columbia, Canada. The primary objectives of the study were to confirm the resource previously estimated by Kennecott and to determine whether the company could predict large tonnages of higher-grade material targeted in the 2003 field program. The company is pleased to say that both objectives have been reached:
The new resource confirms the previous historic resource estimates and shows greater contained metal in the Indicated Resources category of 15% for gold and 14% for copper.
The new resource already identifies, in the indicated category, 70 million tonnes of 1 gram/tonne gold and 1% copper, or 70% of the initial 100 million tonne target.
The updated resource estimate was completed by independent engineering firm, Hatch of Vancouver, British Columbia, utilizing a geologic model developed from more than 100,000 meters of drilling on the project including the company's fall 2003 drill program. Hatch has estimated that the Galore Creek deposit contains an Indicated Resource of 4.0 million ounces of gold (Au), 52.2 million ounces of silver (Ag) and 4.6 billion pounds of copper (Cu) with an additional Inferred Resource of 1.2 million ounces of gold, 17.2 million ounces of silver and 1.3 billion pounds of copper using a 0.5% copper equivalent cut-off grade.
"This updated resource estimate clearly demonstrates that Galore Creek is a very large, high quality porphyry-related gold-silver-copper deposit," stated Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, President and CEO of NovaGold and SpectrumGold, "The study also confirms that we have already achieved 70% of our initial 100 million tonne higher-grade target.
The resource modeling further demonstrates that the Galore Creek mineralized system which covers an area over 12 kilometers in width by 10 kilometers in length remains open to significant expansion.
"Our new exploration model has identified many of the important factors that control higher-grade mineralization," stated Joe Piekenbrock, Vice President of Exploration, "The only areas included in the new resource estimate are the Main and Southwest Deposits, which comprise only 2 of the 12 mineralized zones identified to date. We believe that there is excellent potential to add significantly to the overall resource and expand the higher grade zones of mineralization this season."
As compared with the previously released historic resource on the project the updated estimate shows greater contained metal in the Indicated Resource category of 15% for gold and 14% for copper. The historic resource on the project completed by Kennecott was restricted to those resources within a pit outline with less than a 2 to 1 strip ratio. The current estimate is a true in situ resource and represents all of the potentially mineable blocks within the model above the specified cut-off grade including that material outside of the Kennecott outline.
A total of 326 drill holes were used in the resource estimate, with approximately 21,700 assays averaging 2.9 meters in length contained within the reported zones. These assays were composited into 6-meter intervals down hole to form approximately 12,100 composites. The grades were estimated by ordinary kriging using unique 3D anisotropic variograms for each grade and zone. A minimum of 6 composites from at least 2 drill holes were used to estimate grades in each block. The block size for the model was 25m x 25m x 12m high. |
