Bullion bearish on junior market

Vancouver — Canada’s junior exchange felt the impact of a falling bullion price during the report period that ended March 11, with investors electing to unload gold explorers. The S&P-TSX Venture Exchange composite index lost 28.66 points, or 2.6% of its value, to close at 1,071.94.

Investors continued to buy shares of Snowfield Development, following news that the junior had inked a deal with New Shoshoni Ventures to earn a half-interest in the Fate Mineral diamond property in the Northwest Territories. Snowfield ended the week up 2, to 34, on a volume of 7.1 million shares.

IMA Exploration got a boost on news that surface mapping and sampling have enhanced the economic potential of the Navidad gold project in Patagonia, Argentina. The program doubled the strike length of the mapped bonanza-grade silver-copper-lead mineralization at Navidad Hill to 402 metres. Shares in the junior added 19, to close at 89 on a volume of 2.7 million shares.

Wolfden Resources tacked on 2 and closed at $2.33 with 2.3 million shares traded. Drilling at the Monument Bay property in Manitoba (a joint venture operated by Toronto-listed Bema Gold) returned drill intersections as high as 180.7 grams gold over 1 metre in the recently discovered Twin Lakes West zone.

Rubicon Minerals lost a penny and closed at $1.05 on 2.2 million shares. The company recently agreed to acquire interests in a portfolio of 63 mineral properties, mainly in the Red Lake district of Ontario. In return, Rubicon must pay $500,000 in cash and issue 250,000 shares. In addition, the vendor will be paid a total of $75,000 for each full year of consultancy to Rubicon plus a bonus if more than $150,000 of income is generated on the properties by Rubicon.

American Bonanza Gold Mining closed down a penny to 25 with 2.1 million shares traded. The junior is exploring the Copperstone gold project in Arizona.

Solitaire Minerals finished the week at 15, down 2, with 2 million shares crossing the floor. The company and its partner, King’s Bay Gold, will begin exploring the Headway project in the Red Lake camp. Exploration will consist of line-cutting and a ground magnetic geophysical survey.

Navigator Exploration lost two pennies and closed at 43 with 1.9 million shares traded. The company can acquire up to a 30% interest in the Mellville properties (60% collectively with NDT Ventures) from Northern Empire Minerals, Stornoway Ventures, and Hunter Exploration Group. In early February, Northern Empire, Stornoway and Hunter announced that diamonds had been recovered from two separate kimberlite occurrences on the Aviat property, on the Melville Peninsula.

International Wayside Gold Mines closed at 9, up 2, on a volume of 1.1 million shares. The company recently tabled assay results for four diamond drill holes, two of which were collared southeast of the Bonanza Ledge Discovery area, with the other two drilled at the Myrtle area on its Barkerville Mountain property, near Wells, B.C. The best assay values were obtained in holes BC02-18 (3 ft. grading 35.25 grams gold per tonne) and M02-05 (61.79 grams gold over 0.6 ft.).

Goldminco ended the week unchanged at 13 on 1 million shares. Drill results from the first two holes drilled on the Balabag gold property in the Philippines are expected any day now.