Claude finds new gold zone at Seabee

Claude Resources‘ (CRJ-T, CGR-X) share price got a welcome boost after hitting a new gold zone at its wholly owned Seabee gold mine in Saskatchewan.

On the news, its shares jumped nearly 19% or 31¢ to $1.95 on 1.4 million shares trades.

Highlights from the ongoing drill program that discovered the new zone, which is now called L62, include: 10 metres grading 6.90 grams gold per tonne, including 0.7 metre of 50 grams gold; 4.9 metres of 8.81 grams gold; and 4.8 metres of  5.33 grams. All grades are cut and represent true widths.

“This series of intercepts with above average true widths and economic gold grades are strong indications that we have discovered a new gold-bearing structure,” said Philip Ng, the company’s senior vice-president of mining operations, in a press release.

Claude has mobilized two underground drills on the L62 zones and aims to add another rig to explore and define the zone and other targets near Seabee.  

The L62 zone sits 300 metres from the underground Seabee mine, and Ng said that the company “will likely be in position to start mining L62 in the first half of 2012” to expand its existing production profile.

But for now the company is focusing its efforts on exploration. It plans to complete 86,500 metres on the Seabee gold operation, situated 125 km northeast of La Ronge and 150 km northwest of Flin Flon, Man., before year end. The exploration targets include the Seabee mine, the Santoy 8 gold mine, Santoy Gap, L62 and Neptune.

As of the end of December 2009, the Seabee mine had reserves of 772,309 tonnes grading 6.77 grams gold for 168,163 oz., while Santoy 8 had reserves of 177,328 tonnes of 7.02 grams gold for 40, 015 oz.