3.1M oz. gold resource at Tower Hill’s Livengood

Vancouver – International Tower Hill Mines (ITH-V, THM-X) sees significant potential for its flagship Livengood project, located about 110 km north of Fairbanks, Alaska, after an initial resource tally outlines a significant gold deposit in the Money Knob zone.

An independent study reviews 181 million inferred tonnes grading 0.54 gram gold per tonne for about 3.1 million contained oz. at Money Knob using a 0.3 gram gold cut-off grade. The inferred resource is within a 2-sq. km section of the zone and based on 39 drill holes (averaging 212 metres in depth) and seven trenches — each about 60 metres in length.

Livengood’s gold inventory compares closely in size and grade to Kinross Gold‘s (K-T, KGC-N) Fort Knox mine located about 50 km to the southeast where the major has proven and probable reserves of 160 million tonnes at 0.53 gram gold. The large open pit operation produced roughly 333,000 oz. gold in 2006 at total cash costs of just under US$400 per oz.

Kinross is constructing a large run-of-mine heap leach facility that will augment its milling facility, and estimates an average heap leach recovery of 61% for its run-of-mine ore.

Metallurgical studies on mineralized material from Livengood indicate gold recoveries averaging 96.7% from the oxide and weakly oxidized rock with very quick cyanide extraction. Deeper, non-oxidized material averaged 58.7% gold recovery in the bottle roll tests.

Tower Hill says primary ore controls look to be the intersection of favourable host rocks with major structural zones that likely acted as conduits for the intrusion-related gold bearing fluids. The volcanic package tends to be the best host at the project and is persistently mineralized.

The deposit occurs at surface and forms stratiform and cross-cutting bodies in a folded and faulted sedimentary-volcanic sequence. The main mineralized body occurs along an east-west structural zone of at least 2 km in length and width varying from 300-800 meters.

Situated just off the paved Elliot Highway and along the Trans Alaska Pipeline Corridor, Livengood has good logistics and infrastructure potential should it move to development. The project is roughly 85-road km north of the Alaska State power grid.

Tower Hill notes with only about one-quarter of the known mineralized zone drilled so far there is considerable expansion potential at Livengood. It plans to boost its planned 2008 work program and has earmarked $7.5 million to upgrade and increase the resource — providing data for a preliminary economic scoping study anticipated by mid-2009.

The junior acquired Livengood in mid-2006 — as part a larger portfolio of mineral projects — from AngloGold Ashanti (AU-N, ANG-J, AGG-A) when the senior producer reallocated its exploration and development commitments outside of Alaska.

Tower Hill also recently tabled initial resource estimates on a pair of other Alaskan projects. At Terra, an inferred resource of 428,000 tonnes grading 12.2 grams gold and 23 grams silver per tonne was reviewed in the high-grade vein system while at LMS, 5.9 million inferred tonnes of 0.89 gram gold (167,000 contained oz.) was estimated using a 0.3 gram gold cut-off grade.

Shares of the Alaskan-focused explorer moved off about a dime on the Livengood gold resource to the $2.00-level. Given its roughly 40-million shares outstanding Tower Hill posts an $80-million market capitalization. The stock has a 52-week trading range of $1.28-$3.15.