Drilling intersects `best results’ at Midas

Oftentimes, the most impressive drill results are obtained when a field season is winding down. Such is the case at the 24,400-acre Midas project, an equal joint-venture partnership held by Toronto-listed royalty companies Franco-Nevada Mining and Euro-Nevada Mining.

The partners have been exploring the area north of Nevada’s Carlin Trend over the past three years, and this year embarked on an ambitious, 150-hole, 90,000-ft. program of reverse-circulation drilling. The work is focused on the 3,000-ft.-long Rex Grande zone. The last hole of the season, L95-37, was drilled to test the downdip extension of the zone to the east, and returned a 300-ft. interval that averaged 0.61 oz. gold and 7 oz. silver per ton.

This result, obtained between downhole depths of 1,395 and 1,695 ft., is the best value ever reported at Midas.

Seymour Schulich, chairman of both companies, is enthusiastic about the prospect of developing Rex Grande: “We’re very impressed with the latest results, and we think Rex Grande is on the way to becoming a commercial orebody. It’s similar to Eskay Creek, but without the metallurgical difficulties.”

Earlier in September, Franco and Euro announced that independent consultants had calculated a resource for Rex Grande of 13 million tons averaging 0.16 oz. gold and 2.7 oz. silver. Within this resource, there is a high-grade core of mineralization containing more than 1 million tons averaging 1.13 oz. gold and 21.1 oz. silver at a cutoff grade of 0.5 oz. gold per ton. The resource calculation was based on 45 widely spaced holes, and represents a contained resource of more than 2.5 million oz. gold-equivalent.

In addition, stepout hole L95-30, drilled 200 ft. south of Rex Grande, intersected a 55-ft. interval that averaged 2.92 oz. gold and 13.3 oz. silver. Significantly, the hole extends the previously defined, high-grade core of mineralization.

Schulich adds: “An interesting point about the high-grade core is that all the intersections were cut back to 4 oz. We had many that ran over 8 oz. gold per ton, with the highest running 18 oz.”

(A completely revised resource calculation is expected by year-end.) While most of the drilling was completed on the Rex Grande zone, three widely spaced exploration drill holes were drilled in order to test the newly discovered Acme zone, 1 mile to the south.

One of the holes, M95-27, returned 0.224 oz. gold and 0.84 oz. silver over 120 ft. Another, M95-28, returned 0.143 oz. gold and 0.113 oz. silver over 30 ft.

The intercepts are relatively shallow, and, after additional drilling, the partners think the property can be developed as an open-pit resource.

The Acme zone will be a priority, as it is associated with a large, surface, geochemical anomaly. The size of the anomaly indicates the zone may well be larger than currently thought.

The Acme and Rex Grande are two of nine zones that will be explored next year. “We plan to drill Rex Grande and intersect the ore zone on 100-ft. centres,” Schulich says. “We’ll also complete metallurgical testing and environmental baseline studies there, and possibly take an underground bulk sample.”

Results from recent drilling at Rex Grande are as follows:

Hole Interval(ft.) Gold(oz/t) Silver(oz./t)

L95-33 30 0.33 6.7

L95-32 140 0.43 4.8

L95-28 20 0.34 6.5

L95-27 50 0.34 10.6

P95-21 40 0.21 0.3

C95-7 29 0.45 8.1