Placer eyes Stonewall

Vancouver Placer Dome (PDG-T) has inked a deal with Pacific Intermountain Gold Company, a 75% owned subsidiary of Seabridge Gold (SEA-V), to pick up the Stonewall gold project in Nye Cty., Nevada.

Lying on the Tonopah trend, the Stonewall project is 22-km southeast of Goldfield. Previous exploration discovered a series of quartz veins occupying concentric ring fractures of a Tertiary caldera. These veins range from 0.3-to-20 metres wide and show strike lengths of over 2-km.

Under the deal, Placer must pay US$300,000 over a three-year option period. Anytime during the option, the major can purchase the property for 10,000 oz of gold or its cash equivalent. The vendor retains a sliding scale net smelter royalty based on the gold price, which ranges from 2.0% with the gold price less than US$300 per oz to 9.0% with the gold price above US$900 per oz.. The option agreement is subject to a due diligence period, which terminates on June 30, 2003.

“With junior companies, we are entering into traditional JV agreements whereby our partner can acquire a working interest in the property by making option payments in cash and/or shares and funding exploration work on the property," says Seabridge Gold President Rudi Fronk. "With companies that are proven producers, our aim is to generate gold flow from our exploration projects."

Late last year, Seabridge’s subsidiary dealt a 50% interest in the Thunder Mountain gold project to Castleworth Ventures (WTH-V). The project is immediately adjacent to Newmont Mining (MEN-N)- Midway Gold (MDW-V) discovery near Tonopah and hosts Tertiary volcanic rocks with hydrothermal alteration surrounding quartz veins.

Castleworth can earn a 50% interest in the project by paying US$25,000 at closing, spending US$1.5 million over a three-year period and issuing 1.5 million shares.

The Thunder Mountain project lies along the western edge of the Hannapah mining district in the Tonopah Trend portion of the Walker Lane structural zone. The deformation zone is characterized by a series of parallel to sub-parallel northwest trending strike-slip faults extending for several hundred km generally paralleling the Nevada-California border south of Lake Tahoe.

The Tonopah trend is orientated East-West and defined by a number of significant low-sulfidation epithermal gold-silver districts lying along major lineaments like the Warm Springs and Kawich-Toyaibe lineament.

Mineralization occurs along both west-northwest and north-south structural zones and comprise quartz and quartz-carbonate vein textures indicative of the upper levels of a low-sulfidation epithermal mineral system.

Drilling is slated to begin by the end of the month.