Aurizon focuses on Rouyn-Noranda

By mid-year Aurizon Mines (arz-t, azk-x) will have completed a feasibility study on its Joanna gold project along the Cadillac break, 2 km northeast of Rouyn-Noranda in Quebec’s Abitibi region.
Meanwhile, the company’s chief executive David Hall is stacking up option agreements on nearby exploration properties that could become satellite deposits.
Last May, Aurizon signed an option agreement with Typhoon Exploration (typ-v) to acquire a 50% interest in the Fayolle gold project, about 10 km north of Joanna. And more recently, the gold producer picked up an option from Midland Exploration (md-v) to earn a 50% interest in the junior’s Patris gold project, about 7 km northeast of Joanna.
“Joanna is on the Cadillac break, Fayolle is on the Destor-Porcupine fault, and Patris is on the splay coming off the Destor-Porcupine fault,” Hall says in a telephone interview from Vancouver.
Both Fayolle and Patris fit Hall’s strategy of “low-risk entrance into additional exploration exposure, particularly in Quebec, where we’re focusing on properties with good geology that have been explored to a certain level by good technical teams, and we can leverage off those things and provide capital,” he explains.
“We can use the technical teams of the owners to carry out fieldwork and exploration, and where we get involved is the financing and the design of the program. We have a lot of input into the targets we want covered and the expenditures under each program.”
The Patris property is along the La Pause fault, which both Midland and Aurizon believe could be the southeastern extension of the Destor-Porcupine fault.
Aurizon can acquire 50% of Midland’s Patris project during a four-year period by spending $3 million on exploration, $600,000 of that in the first year. Aurizon must also spend $230,000 in cash including $40,000 upon signing the agreement.
After completing its earn-in, Aurizon has the option to acquire another 10% by delivering a positive prefeasibility study within four years.
Under that scenario it would make cash payments of $80,000 a year until the prefeasibility is delivered, and fund exploration work including a 40,000-metre drill program.
So far, Midland has completed exploration work involving line cutting and ground-based magnetic and induced-polarization surveys over 30 km. The new anomalies Midland has detected are all near the La Pause fault in both ultramafic rocks of the Malartic Group and sedimentary rocks of the Kewagama Group.
Midland believes the Patris property has “very strong potential for gold discoveries similar to deposits in the Cadillac and Malartic gold mining camps” because it covers the faulted and folded contact between the sedimentary rocks of the Kewagama Group, and the mafic to ultramafic volcanic rocks of the Malartic Group over a strike length of more than 4 km.
“Several new folded structures were recently interpreted based on magnetic data, which represent favourable sites for the injection of porphyry intrusions and deposition of gold mineralization,” Midland states in its literature. “Many gold showings occur near this contact, namely the Gadoury showing, grading 6.3 grams gold per tonne over 0.98 metre, and the McDermott showing, that graded 8.6 grams gold over 1.2 metres.”
Patris is also 5 km southeast of Midland’s Dunn property, which has been optioned to Osisko Mining Corp. (osk-t).
At the Fayolle project, Aurizon can earn a 50% interest subject to an underlying 2% net smelter return royalty by spending $10 million and subscribing for $2 million Typhoon shares. To earn a further 15%, Aurizon must deliver a feasibility study or spend another $15 million on the project.
If recent drill results are any guide, it’s very likely Aurizon will opt for the additional 15% stake.
In late December, Aurizon and Midland released a new series of drill results including 10.5 metres of 5.1 grams gold per tonne from hole 20, and 4 metres of 10.8 grams gold in hole 14.