Rich drill holes maintained interest in Nevada’s Carlin

North America’s richest goldfield keeps getting richer.

In August, Denver-based Newmont Gold pulled an intersection of 350 ft of 0.768 oz gold per ton from its Deep Star property along Nevada’s Carlin trend (N.M., Aug 21/89).

Newmont, a 90% owned subsidiary of Newmont Mining (NYSE), has five open pits at Carlin and produced 830,000 oz of gold from them last year. So great are Newmont’s holdings that the new results had little effect on the companies reserve estimates. Newmont’s mines currently sit atop an estimated 16 million oz of gold.

Toronto-based American Barrick (TSE), another major player at Carlin, pulled its own hot intersection in October (N.M., Oct 30/89). Drilling on the North property returned a core grading 0.463 oz gold across 120 ft, about a mile from Barrick’s massive Goldstrike operation.

The $365-million Goldstrike mill and mine has reserves of 128 million tons grading 0.095 oz.

At the McCoy/Cove mine of Echo Bay Mines (TSE), construction of a decline ramp designed to mine the high-grade ore zone was hampered by flooding problems. But by year-end the ramp was approaching completion. Echo Bay plans to mine at a rate of 10,000 tons per day.