Romarco calculates resource at Midas

After two field seasons, Romarco Minerals (R-T) has completed a resource calculation on its Midas gold-silver property in northern Nevada.

Based on 51 drill holes on the Gold Crown vein, two footwall veins and two hangingwall veins, the company has blocked out 743,000 tons of vein material with an average grade of 0.51 oz. gold and 5.9 oz. silver per ton, for a total of 379,400 oz. gold and 4.4 million oz. silver. Romarco used a cutoff grade of 0.15 oz. gold-equivalent, a gold price of US$300 per oz. and a silver price of US$6 per oz. to determine the resource.

The company acquired the property late in 1995 and drilled it during the summers of 1996 and 1997. The first part of 1998 was spent on a program of check sampling, in which the reverse-circulation drill results were tested against those from core drilling. “We wanted to be completely comfortable with the resource we produced,” says Romarco geologist Sally Rollinson.

The Midas property consists of 325 acres in several claim blocks surrounding the Ken Snyder gold-silver mine of royalty partners Franco-Nevada Mining and Euro-Nevada Mining.

The resource calculation covers only the Belnap claims, which contain the westward extension of the Ken Snyder mine’s Gold Crown vein. Romarco drilled the Gold Crown on a 200-by-300 ft. grid and found that mineralization showed excellent continuity over a strike length of 1,700 ft. and a vertical extent of 1,000 ft. The vein averages between 5 and 10 ft. in thickness and remains open at depth.

Hanging Wall No. 1 vein is between 10 and 20 ft. thick, with a strike length of 900 ft. and a vertical extent of 1,000 ft. Mineralization remains open along strike and at depth in the footwall and hangingwall veins.

Romarco believes the potential to increase the resource is very good, and anticipates further ounces will come from testing the lateral and vertical extensions of the hangingwall and footwall veins. To date, the company has completed only four holes in the hanging wall veins, three of which encountered high-grade intercepts.

Romarco is hoping to find additional vein structures in the northwestern portion of the Belnap claims, Rollinson says, as well as expand the known mineralization on the Dixie claims. Preliminary metallurgical testing will get under way in May. In addition, drilling is scheduled to resume at that time. The company is evaluating the feasibility of exploring the deposit from underground rather than continue with surface drilling.