Maude Lake busy at Comtois

Montreal-based Maude Lake Exploration (MAU-M) has signed an option agreement with Newmont Mining (NEM-N) that will allow the junior to acquire a 95% interest in a 15-claim property north of, and contiguous with, Maude Lake’s Comtois gold property, west of Lebel-sur-Quevillon, Que.

To do so, Maude Lake must spend $200,000 on exploration before February 2005. Government-owned Socit de developpement de la Baie James holds the remaining 5% interest.

In the mid-1980s, Noranda (NRD-T) outlined two gold-mineralized zones at the property, generating drill results such as 3.43 grams gold per tonne over 5.3 metres and 10.4 grams gold over 2.6 metres. Maude Lake plans to begin its own drilling at the Newmont property in mid-August.

The known mineralized zones at the Newmont property are 7 km north of, and possibly continuous with, the Comtois property’s North and South gold zones, where a 5,000-metre drill program carried out by Maude Lake over the winter developed an indicated resource of 695,485 tonnes grading 9.05 grams gold at a cutoff grade of 4 grams gold. At a 1-gram cutoff, indicated resources rise to 1.8 million tonnes of 4.5 grams gold.

Comtois’s gold mineralization has been delineated within a 1.2-km corridor of felsic volcanic rocks that remains open both to the east and west.

Two recent metallurgical tests on the Comtois material indicate that gold can be recovered using conventional cyanidation methods, and recovery rates above 95% are anticipated.

Over the next few months at Comtois, Maude Lake will undertake a stripping program, as well as geophysical and geochemical surveys, in preparation for another round of drilling.

Maude Lake has three option agreements at the 185-claim Comtois property, the most important one being an option to acquire a 50% interest in 130 claims owned by Cameco through the expenditure of $1.3 million on exploration and the payment to Cameco of $200,000 in cash or shares. These Cameco claims hold the two main mineralized zones discovered by Cameco and prospector Brian Osborne during the mid-1990s.

Maude Lake is funding the work out of a $934,000 financing, which resulted in the issuance of 5.8 million flow-through and common shares priced at 16 each.