Premier Gets Into Gear For The New Year

While Premier Gold Mines (PG-T, PIRGF-O) is making a name for itself through its three projects in northwestern Ontario, it isn’t too busy to prove up a site in northwestern Mexico, too.

In early January, the Thunder Bay-based company announced assay results from its initial 32- hole drill program at the Santa Teresa project in Baja California, Mexico.

Results were highlighted by one hole that hit 21.1 grams gold per tonne over 1.4 metres and another that struck 16.68 grams over 3.1 metres.

Premier says drilling confirms multiple high-grade veins up to 260 metres along strike from the historic Princessa gold mine. The deposit is open in all directions.

Santa Teresa sits adjacent to and on strike with the Princessa mine. The Princessa orebody was mined to just 110 metres depth and is known to extend close to the northern boundary of the Santa Teresa property.

Princessa is part of the 16-kmlong El Alamo district, an area where technological and political circumstances halted mining back in the early 1900s.

Premier’s joint-venture partner at Santa Teresa, Sutter Gold Mining (SGM-V, SGMNF-O), is conducting the drill program there.

Premier can earn a 50% interest in the project by issuing 100,000 of its shares to Sutter and putting roughly US$1.5 million into exploration. It can then move up to a 65% interest by paying US$500,000 to Sutter and spending another US$4 million on exploration.

The project is accessible by road and sits roughly 250 km south of San Diego.

News of drill results from Santa Teresa came on the heels of an exploration update for the Premier’s northwestern Ontario projects issued on Jan. 5.

The company says it will spend roughly $15 million on exploration in the area.

Those plans are to include resource definition drilling at its Hardrock and Red Lake gold projects.

Hardrock — which sits in the heart of the Beardmore-Geraldton greenstone belt — is a joint venture with Roxmark Mines (RMK-V, RMKMF-O) with Premier able to earn a 70% interest.

The project will see the lion’s share of the exploration budget with more than 50,000 metres of drilling planned to get under way in January.

Hardrock hosts multiple historical mines that, all together, pro- duced more than 2 million oz. of gold between 1938 and 1968.

Premier says the mined zones remain open at depth.

The Trans-Canada highway, Trans-Canada pipeline, and major power lines all run through the centre of the property.

The next project in order of priority is Rahill-Bonanza, which sits at the centre of the Red Lake district.

The project is joint venture with Red Lake Gold Mines — an affiliate of Goldcorp (G-T, GG-N).

The 2009 drill program calls for both delineation drilling near the workings of the Wilmar gold mine, and deep drilling to test the primary deep targets on the properties.

Wilmar, a near-surface mine, closed in 1971.

The final project to see exploration dollars is Premier’s 100%-owned PQ North property near Goldcorp’s Musselwhite gold mine.

Premier’s faith in the project has been bolstered by Goldcorp’s announcement that gold mineralization at Musselwhite extends north with intersections on structures trending close to PQ North.

Goldcorp’s results include a drill intercept of 15.5 grams per tonne across a true width of 4.5 metres.

Musselwhite has produced 2 million oz. of gold to date.

At presstime, the company’s shares were trading for $1.68. They have moved between $3.14 and $1.05 over the last 52 weeks and the company has 78 million shares outstanding.