Tough to get attention for a gold discovery in the land of 100-million-plus ouncesSeabridge Gold makes a high grade gold discovery next to its Sulphurets deposit in BC that could impact the economics of the massive KSM gold-copper project.Author: Kip Keen
Posted: Friday , 07 Sep 2012
mineweb.com
HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) -
There was a gold discovery this week that got a bit of a snub, possibly because it finds itself in a crowd of other gold ounces. Namely, on September 5, Seabridge Goldreported a discovery by three drillholes to the southwest of its Sulphurets deposit, part of its KSM gold-copper project where it holds some 66 million ounces gold in global resources, plus copper, silver and molybdenum.
There are several reasons if you're Seabridge or interested in their massive KSM gold-copper project to like what you see in the new drillhits. To begin with, it's a discovery. If there are to be new ounces gold from this, they will be additive, and possibly higher grade. And size wise, this discovery holds some real potential as the three drillholes were widely spaced - 900 metres apart. That's key. Two of them are at one end of the discovery, and one of them at the other, with none yet in between. Closer to Sulphurets Seabridge hit 99 metres @ 2.11 g/t gold and 2.5 g/t silver starting 151 metres downhole. Then, 900 metres to the southwest of that, it hit 22 metres @ 8.94 g/t Au, including 2 metres @ 23.1 g/t Au and 2 metres @ 66.7 g/t Au, and in another drillhole targeting mineralization more or less below that intercept, Seabridge drilled 74 metres @ 0.85 g/t Au, including a couple two metres intercepts just over 8 g/t Au.
As well, the discovery, called the Camp zone, is unlike the KSM deposits. Per Seabridge descriptions, Camp mineralization looks quite a bit like the higher grade epithermal-style stuff Pretium Resources has at its Brucejack property next door. Seabridge had been under the impression that unlike Pretium it only had deeper level, non-epithermal mineralization at KSM. Indeed, exploration wise, it has been looking for a higher grade copper core to KSM gold-copper deposits. It still is.
But to Seabridge's surprise, in the Camp zone it has found epithermal hallmarks such as quartz adularia that also turn up in similar host rock at Pretium's Brucejack. There are also wide, lower grade halos within which higher-grade gold veins run (the narrower intersections above). Yes, very Brucejack-ey. No, it's not the uber-grade stuff in Pretium's Valley of the Kings zone (not yet?) but that does not diminish the discovery as, importantly, the hits so far contain wide intercepts with higher grade gold mineralization than the average gold grade on the KSM bulk tonnage project (Reserves: 2.1 billion tonnes @ 0.55 g/t Au, 0.21 percent copper, 2.74 g/t silver and 45 ppm molybdenum).
The grade potential here has not escaped Seabridge Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk. Speaking from New York, Fronk told Mineweb that if the Camp zone proves to be resource worthy with these kinds of elevated gold grades (a big if at this point he noted) it could have a significant impact on KSM economics. This is a hypothetical situation, to be sure, but still worth imagining as the new zone has some real advantages for Seabridge in developing KSM. Like the KSM deposits, the Camp zone is relatively close to surface. But Camp is at a lower elevation - that is more accessible - than much of the KSM deposits, parts of which border mountainous icefields.
The thinking is, if Camp proves higher grade than KSM and significant in size Seabridge could pull in higher grade gold material into the project earlier on, possibly boosting returns and making for a more attractive payback on the massive KSM gold-copper project. "That could have a real impact on KSM," Fronk said.
Watch for infill and expansion drilling from the Camp zone, which Fronk expects to be completed by the end of October.
A final point to make. If a grassroots junior explorer made this discovery you can reckon its shareprice would have flown on 99 metres @ 2.11 g/t Au, 22 metres @ 8.94 g/t Au and 74 metres @ 0.85 g/t Au, in drillholes 900 metres apart. As it was, the day of the discovery news, tightly-held Seabridge's trading volume was meagre. Its shareprice did blip up about three percent to C$17.52, but it's hard to say if that was discovery related as Seabridge has been climbing through August and early September anyway, and meatime gold has been on the upswing since mid-August.
Maybe this is a case of comparing apples and oranges: the excitement an early stage explorer can generate at the drillbit versus what a junior like Seabridge can do - one that is mostly appreciated for an already gargantuan gold-copper project that is going through engineering studies and will eventually go to permitting. When you have some 66 million ounces gold plus lots of copper in global resources, as does Seabridge, and your neighbour, Pretium, has another 51 odd million ounces gold in resources, perhaps it is hard to spark a wildfire of interest with a small set of drilling results, which in the grand scheme of things may not seem all that special.
But, as pointed out above, there surely are aspects to the Camp zone discovery that deserve special attention. |
