Fronteer Gold probes open pit at Northumberland

Open-pit test work at Fronteer Gold‘s (FRG-T, FRG-X) Northumberland project in Nevada has returned 6.06 grams gold per tonne over 16.92 metres and 369.5 grams silver per tonne over 3.05 metres.

Fronteer is advancing Northumberland as a combined open-pit and underground operation. The majority of the drilling so far has concentrated on defining high-grade domains of underground-mineable sulphide gold mineralization and the company has started building a 280-metre long decline to access the deeper high-grade mineralization.

At the same time it is defining the open-pit mineable oxide and transitional material surrounding the property’s two shallow historic pits. Recent drilling adjacent to and beneath the historic pits has returned excellent grades over significant widths, the company says.

Core material taken from seven holes will be composited into samples for column leaching and other metallurgical testing. Assay results from the program’s first four of these holes include wide intervals of open-pit mineable gold mineralization.

Drill highlights include: 6.06 grams per tonne gold over 16.92 metres including 8.93 grams gold over 7.62 metres, and a separate zone that returned 2.44 grams gold over 44.20 metres in hole FNU43; 2.93 grams gold over 30.18 metres in hole FNU45; and 2.78 grams gold over 19.81 metres in hole FNU44.

High-grade silver highlights from new drilling include 369.50 grams silver over 3.05 metres in hole FNU44; 154.93 grams silver over 4.57 metres including 457.0 grams silver over 1.52 metres; 55.33 grams silver over 3.66 metres in FNU43; and 43.72 grams silver over 2.74 metres in FNU46.

Previously Northumberland produced between 200,000 and 300,000 ounces of gold from oxide and mildly transitional ores via run of mine and crushed ore heap leach operations but production was stopped in 1991 because of low gold prices.

Currently Northumberland has an indicated resource of 36.5 million tonnes grading 1.92 grams gold per tonne for 2.26 million ounces of contained gold and an additional inferred resource of 6.9 million tonnes at 3.49 grams gold for 776,000 ounces of gold. Roughly 20% of the gold ounces are oxide, with the balance made up of transitional or sulfide material.

Fronteer claims Northumberland is one of the largest, undeveloped Carlin-style gold deposits in Nevada.

At presstime in Toronto Fronteer was trading at $10.34 per share. Over the last year it has traded in a range of $3.88 and $10.45 per share and has about 150.5 million shares outstanding.