Vancouver – Grayd Resource (GYD-V) has enticed Newmont Mining (NEM-N) to option its La India gold project in Sonora State, Mexico.
Following its three month due diligence program, Newmont is pushing forward to earn 51% interest in the project by spending US$7 million over 4 years. Grayd will remain operator for the first two years of the earn-in.
Under the option agreement, the major can acquire a further 19%, boosting its ownership to 70%, by completing a bankable feasibility study.
Newmont’s due diligence program included mapping, several hundred surface samples, 1,000 line km of airborne geophysics and 20 line km of ground geophysics.
La India is situated in the Mulatos gold belt, about 7 km from Alamos Gold’s (AGI-T) 3-million ounce Mulatos gold deposit, and is characterized by Tertiary volcanic-hosted high-sulphidation epithermal gold mineralization. Analogies have been made comparing the Mulatos gold belt with Peru’s Yanacocha district where Newmont has a large footprint.
With a land position of over 7,000 hectares, Grayd is the second largest landholder in the Mulatos belt after Alamos.
Grayd president and CEO Marc Prefontaine commented on the deal with Newmont, "we let them have the project for three months, they went and did all that work, now we become the operators; so we’ll sit down with them and work out our program and budget and off we go. I imagine we’ll hit the surface in August and aim for a Fall drill program."
Shares in the junior have recently buoyed from the sub-20 level to the 25-range on high volumes. Grayd sports an $8.5-million market capitalization based on its 35 million shares issued.
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