Randy Turner’s Independence Gold advancing 19 properties in B.C., Yukon

With $15 million in the till, newly listed Independence Gold (IGO-V) is looking to recreate past success in B.C. and the Yukon while searching for gold and silver. The company was spun out of Randy Turner’s former Silver Quest Resources on Dec. 29, following New Gold‘s (NGD-T, NGD-X) $131- million, $1.32-a-share takeover bid in October.

New Gold acquired Silver Quest for a 25% interest in the Davidson property, which forms the northern half of the 8.3-million-oz.-gold-equivalent Blackwater gold-silver project. New Gold bought the rest from Richfield Ventures in early 2011, and it also picked up Silver Quest’s large Capoose property 25 km to the west.

Turner’s Independence Gold looks to further explore its remaining 3Ts epithermal gold-silver project in central B.C., as well as 18 other properties in the Yukon’s White Gold district. A geologist and long-time diamond enthusiast, Turner is best known in the industry for having sold Winspear Diamonds and its Snap Lake diamond project in the Northwest Territories to De Beers Group for $305 million in 2000. DeBeers officially opened the $1.1-billion underground mine in July 2008.

Independence Gold’s 3Ts project covers a quartz-carbonate vein system 120 km southwest of Vanderhoof in B.C.’s Nechako Plateau region. So far 12 individual mineralized veins have been identified, ranging up to 650 metres in strike length and 15 metres in true width.

A 10-hole, 1,645-metre diamond drilling program at 3Ts in mid-2011 returned one sparkling intersection grading 5.33 grams gold per tonne and 50.6 grams silver per tonne over an estimated true width of 14 metres in hole 11-47. The hole was drilled in the Ted vein area, intercepting the lower Ted vein at a depth of 301 metres below surface. Of the two other holes testing the vein, hole 46 returned 1 metre of 0.37 gram gold and 32 grams silver, and hole 48, testing the northern extension of the vein, returned no significant assays. Six shallow holes at the Ringer target similarly failed to find significant mineralization, while a single hole testing the Mint vein intersected 4 metres averaging 7.69 grams gold and 84.2 grams silver.

A historical inferred resource estimate for the project’s Tommy and Ted veins contained 826,300 tonnes grading 5.22 grams gold and 85 grams silver, representing 138,800 oz. gold and 2.25 million oz. silver.

Farther north, Independence conducted early stage exploration work on all 18 of its Yukon properties. The majority of exploration focused on the Boulevard and Prospector Mountain projects, with reconnaissance-style exploration on the other properties.

Boulevard, located in a historic placer gold district 135 km south of Dawson City, adjoins the western border of Kaminak Gold‘s (KAM-V) Coffee gold project in the White Gold district. After taking 5,000 soil samples early in the field season, as well as geological mapping, airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys, Independence completed several thousand metres of drilling along a 20-km-long geochemical anomaly. Results are pending.

Prospector Mountain is a gold-copper porphyry prospect believed to host peripheral epithermal high-grade, gold-silver-copper veins on the western side of the property. Located 90 km northwest of Carmacks, Yukon, access to the property is via four-by-four vehicles or helicopter. Independence collected 800 rock samples from the property in June, along with completing the usual geophysical surveys and mapping. A follow-up 1,588-metre, 12-hole drill program was completed in August, the results of which are also pending.

A total of 3,750 geochemical soil samples were taken from the company’s other properties in the district.

Shares of Independence Gold debuted at 50¢ on Dec. 29 before sliding to 40¢ by presstime on Jan. 3. The company has 43.2 million shares outstanding, with New Gold holding a 9.9% interest as a result of an earlier $3-million private placement.