Wesdome Gold Mines (WDO-T) has found some much needed gold in an area that has never been drilled before on its Dubuisson property in Val d’Or, Que.; good news to go along with a solid third quarter.
Wesdome was drilling from a barge on Lac de Montigny before the ice set in and is now planning land-based drilling to test the extent of the mineralized system.
Highlights include 8 metres grading 6.92 grams gold per tonne, 5.8 metres grading 8.75 grams gold and 17 metres grading 4.25 grams gold.
“It is nice to find something entirely brand new hiding under the lake in the middle of the Val d’Or mining camp,” Wesdome’s vice president of exploration said in a statement.
Mannard says the preliminary grades look similar to what the company is mining 3 km to the west at the Kiena mine. The company aimed to 50,000 metres in 2008 to expand depleting resources Wesdome’s two gold operations.
Six 100-metre spaced, 2-hole sections were completed and the structure appears open in all directions at Dubuisson.
Wesdome was trying to get a handle on the size potential of the mineralized system. Gold has been traced for 500 metres in an east-south-east direction but the geometry, internal continuity and true width of the mineralization is still not clear.
The company says there are multiple zones of gold mineralization hosted by a complex mélange of diorite, feldspar porphyry and basalt encased in a broad ultramafic sequence, bound by deformed talc-chlorite schists. Mineralization includes quartz-albite-tourmaline-pyrite veinlet stockworks in strongly albitized diorite and/or feldspar porphyry.
On Nov. 12, the company reported it had earned $2.2 million in the third quarter from revenue of $22.2 million, up from earnings of $150,000 in the second quarter.
The company mined a total of 23,700 oz. gold, evenly split between its Kiena mine and the Eagle River mine near Wawa, Ont. The company expects to exceed its 80,000-oz. target for 2008.
Wesdome received an average gold price of C$902 an oz. during the third quarter and C$913 for the year so far, compared to C$712 and C$740 per oz., respectively, in 2007. Cash costs were $645 per oz., compared to $694 per oz. for the first three quarters combined.
Wesdome credited the volatile exchange rate between the US and Canadian dollar for enabling it to sell gold above C$900 per oz. The Canadian dollar was trading at US81.12¢ today, down 20¢ from this time last year.
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