EXPLORATION 1997 — BMG plans busy year

Armed with a US$35-million exploration war chest for 1997, Battle Mountain Gold (BMG-N) plans to explore early-stage properties in North America and overseas, as well as advanced targets near its existing operations.

Priorities include the Vera-Nancy property in Australia, where ongoing exploration continues to return positive results. Drilling north of a known resource, Battle Mountain and local partner Normandy Mining have been encouraged by results that include 22 grams gold per tonne over 19 metres, 44.7 grams over 6 metres, 21.7 grams over 9 metres and 14 grams over 10 metres.

Battle Mountain has a 50% interest in Vera-Nancy, where more than 1 million contained ounces have been identified to date. On the operations front, ore from a small open-pit has been mined and stockpiled. Full production from underground is expected to begin in the second half of this year at an annual rate of 100,000 oz.

In the meantime, the partners continue to test other targets at the Vera-Nancy property, including known veins and related geophysical anomalies.

On its own, Battle Mountain has assembled a large land position in Mexico, where it plans to test several targets this year. Among them is El Cairo, a bulk-tonnage, heap-leachable gold prospect. Of the eight holes drilled last year, seven encountered significant widths of anomalous gold mineralization, with the best result being 1.05 grams gold over 100 metres.

Battle Mountain is also encouraged by the results of 1996 drilling at the 65%-held Dunkwa project in Ghana, a joint venture with Birim Goldfields (BGI-T). This year, the partners will carry out more drilling on the Mampon gold prospect.

Another exploration priority is the Volta Grande project in Brazil’s Para state. The 150-sq.-km concession is underlain by Archean greenstone and granite-gneiss terrain, and includes 20 areas of garimpeiro (artisanal) workings, which occur along a 12-by-8-km belt.

The project is a joint venture with TVX Gold (TVX-T), which is drilling a surface gold anomaly measuring 1.8 km by 200 metres. Drilling to date has intersected multiple zones of mineralization, ranging from 4 to 36 metres in thickness, at gold grades ranging from 0.6 to 6 grams.