Hits and misses for Clifton Star at Duparquet

Vancouver – The 120,000-metre drill program at the Duparquet project in Quebec has produced its second set of results for owner Clifton Star Resources (CFO-V) and partner Osisko Mining (OSK-T).

Osisko is funding the major drilling effort at Duparquet, after signing a deal to earn a 50% stake in the property by spending $70 million on exploration over four years, including at least $15 million this year. In its previous exploration work Clifton Star had been focused on searching out high-grade veins but within the new partnership the focus has shifted to outlining larger, lower-grade zones amenable to bulk tonnage mining.

The latest set of results includes a few intercepts that support that focus. The best hit came in hole 117, which cut 108.5 metres grading 4.03 grams gold per tonne starting 28 metres downhole. The intercept included a 4.3-metre segment carrying 40.32 grams gold. Hole 118 also produced an interesting result: the drill hit 24 metres grading 1.37 grams gold from 162 metres depth, followed by 31 metres of 2.65 grams gold at 210 metres downhole.

Those results come from the Beattie property, one of three properties at Duparquet. Beattie and Donchester, which is adjacent to the east, cover an east-west striking intrusive body that is more than 3 km long and at least 900 metres deep. Gold mineralization generally occurs at the north and south contacts of the body with the surrounding county rock, in the form of subvertical zones of finely disseminated pyrite-gold with variable arsenopyrite in brecciated or sheared porphyry.

Both Beattie and Donchester host historic mines, worked between 1033 and 1956. Together the two operations yielded roughly 1 million oz. gold

Complementing the Beattie-Donchester intrusion is a second, parallel, mineralized porphyry intrusion just to the southeast. The Dumico porphyry is roughly 2.2 km long and 350 metres wide and hosts two mineralized zones known as Central Duparquet and Dumico, which are similar in nature to the Beattie-Donchester intrusion zones. Combined with Beattie-Donchester, the two intrusions make for a total strike length of 5.5 km.

The drill effort at Beattie was designed as a reconnaissance sweep of the property, with drill holes spaced 400 metres apart across 1.2 km of strike. Two of the last 6 holes encountered underground workings and did not reach their target depths. One hole did not hit gold mineralization.

Clifton Star’s share price fell as much as 53¢ or almost 10% in inter-day trading but recovered before the end of the day to close down 17¢ at $5.48. The company has a 52-week trading range of $1.85 to $8.25 and has 25 million shares outstanding. Osisko’s share price remained essentially unchanged on the news, losing two pennies to close at $9.01.