Infill drilling this year at Seabridge Gold‘s (SEA-T) Courageous Lake property in Canada’s Northwest Territories is helping upgrade inferred resources to higher categories and increasing the size and grade of the deposit, the company says, noting that its third batch of infill holes reported on Nov. 1 “are among the best yet.”
Highlights from the most recent round of drilling include: intersections with 36 metres of 4.14 grams gold per tonne and 14 metres of 1.87 grams gold in hole 152; 12 metres of 5.01 grams gold and 16 metres of 1.27 grams gold in hole 153; 18 metres of 1.52 grams gold in hole 155; and 20 metres of 4.60 grams gold and 30.5 grams of 3.11 grams in hole 157. Other notable intercepts were 15 metres of 3.39 grams gold in hole 161 and 10.5 grams of 2.63 grams gold in hole 163. Assays are pending for another 12 holes.
The company is spending $16 million this year on an exploration, engineering and environmental program at the project’s multi-million-ounce FAT gold deposit. It’s an effort to raise the preliminary economic assessment completed in June – with annual gold production of 383,000 oz. for 16 years at an estimated cash cost of US$599 per oz. – to a preliminary feasibility study in the first quarter of 2012.
A new resource is expected before the end of this year updating a previous estimate released in late January that outlined measured and indicated resources at a 0.83-gram-gold-per-tonne cut-off grade, with 90.17 million tonnes grading 2.34 grams gold for 6.78 million oz. contained gold. Inferred resources reached 63.05 million tonnes of 2.24 grams gold for 4.54 million oz. contained gold.
The Courageous Lake property is 240 km northeast of Yellowknife and lies in a historic mining district with a 53-km greenstone belt containing the FAT deposit -one of Canada’s largest undeveloped gold deposits, according to the company, which holds a 100% stake in the project.
The FAT deposit, located between the north shore of Matthews Lake and the south shore of Courageous Lake, is most often described as a series of gold zones concentrated in long and narrow bands. The deposit is hosted by metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks. Gold concentrations are associated with the introduction of silica, muscovite and sulphide minerals.
Gold mineralization is hosted in the upper part of an assemblage of Archean-age felsic pyroclastic rocks, just below a transition zone to volcanoclastic and sedimentary rocks.
Previous explorers at Courageous Lake include Noranda Mining from 1976 to 1990, and Placer Dome from 1998 to 1999. Seabridge Resources, now Seabridge Gold, purchased the property in 2002.
At presstime Seabridge traded at $25.26 per share within a 52-week trading range of $21.14-$35. The company has 42.4 million shares outstanding.
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