Exploration Orex (ME) is weeks away from completing a bankable feasibility study on the Goldboro property in Nova Scotia. The company is seeking about $50 million from a major bank to construct a test mill on the gold property in Guysborough Cty., N.S. The mill will be used to treat some 100,000 tons of gold mineralization from a small portion of the 1.18-million-ton deposit which extends for about one kilometre.
“The bank has sent their mining people to the property and told us they see no technical problems,” Michel Roy, vice-president of exploration, told The Northern Miner. “So now we are gathering the data for a feasibility study.”
Mill recovery figures in the feasibility study will be based on a test run, planned for this month, of two 5-tonne samples, one from the 125-ft. level and one from the 150-ft. level. The samples will be treated in a gravity-flotation- cyanidation pilot plant at Lakefield Research in Lakefield, Ont.
The grade of the mineralization to be mined will be determined by assaying core from a recent 108-hole underground drilling program. That core is being assayed at Lakefield, and a technique called double metallics is used.
The core is ground to 95% minus 28 mesh and a total metals’ assay taken of the plus 28 mesh fraction, then a 3.5-kg sample is taken of the minus 28 mesh fraction and ground even finer to 90% minus 200 mesh. The plus 200 mesh material is fire assayed and the minus 200 mesh material goes through a double fire assaying process.
This elaborate (and expensive) assay technique is necessary, Roy says, to avoid the effects of the uneven distribution and segregation of gold in the deposit.
About 20,000 ft. of core drilled elsewhere on the property will also be assayed, and the same technique will be used.
About 70% of the 108 holes from the test-mining area have yet to be assayed.
Highlights of the most recent results include an 11 ft. intersection grading 0.6 oz. per ton in hole U-69, and a 49 ft. section grading 0.17 oz. in hole U-77. Most of the intersections of greater than 15 ft. are around the 0.07 oz. level.
Orex also reported results from one surface hole drilled during a 1989 program along the western extension of the Goldboro deposit. The best intersection in this hole (BR89-86) returned 0.07 oz. over 50 ft.
Reserve estimations on the Goldboro property indicate probable reserves of 1.18 million tons grading 0.18 oz. Orex will release new reserve estimates when all the results from the current drilling have been returned.
Be the first to comment on "Orex preparing for feasibility study"