Skygold and Wildrose plan to merge

Vancouver – Joint venture partners no more: Skygold Ventures (SKV-V) and Wildrose Resources (WRS-V) have decided to merge their resources into one company focused on their shared asset, the Spanish Mountain gold project in central B.C.

In a deal worth roughly $18 million, Skygold will issue 0.82 shares for each Wildrose share to acquire all of the junior. The merger, which Wildrose’s management and board of directors fully support, would require 75% support from Wildrose shareholders.

The deal would leave Skygold with a 100% interest in Spanish Mountain, which had been a 70% Skygold 30% Wildrose joint venture. Skygold, currently the project operator, plans to conduct an expanded drilling program aimed at producing a National Instrument 43-101-compliant resource estimate by the first quarter of 2008.

The property is located in south-central B.C., 70 km northeast of Williams Lake and near the historic placer mining town of Likely. Large volume bench placers surround the Spanish Mountain property on three sides.

Gold mineralization is hosted in a sequence of black argillites interbedded with strongly sericite-carbonate altered debris flow. Both bulk-tonnage disseminated mineralization and higher-grade quartz veins are present.

Since May Skygold has had two diamond drill rigs on the property working on a 60,000-metre drill plan; a third drill rig is scheduled to arrive on site in January. To date the company has completed 110 holes. Results from 36 holes have been released.

In the Main zone, drilling has consistently intersected gold in the upper argillite horizon, which now forms a sheet of mineralization traced along strike for 800 metres with a width of roughly 500 metre. The depth of the mineralized sheet ranges from 10 metres to 135 metres.

A recent hole into the Main zone, hole 644, returned 173.5 metres grading 0.74 gram gold per tonne from 38 metres depth, including 84.5 metres of 1.12 grams gold. Skygold has outlined a higher-grade region at the south end of the zone; hole 634 hit that region and returned 22.1 metres of 2.76 grams gold from 38 metre depth. On the western margin, hole 588 cut 42 metres of 9.38 grams gold from 232 metres downhole, still open at depth.

This Upper Main zone is one of three subparallel horizons. The Lower Main and North Main zones, which are staggered below the Upper zone, together enclose an area roughly 1.2 km by 1 km, still open in all directions.

Skygold also punched holes into regional targets. The last 16.5 metres of hole 596, collared in a placer workings area, averaged 0.6 grams gold from 264 metres depth.

Skygold’s share price moved up 9 to close at $1.08. The company has a 52-week trading range of 99 to $2.10 and has 47.1 million shares issued. Wildrose lost 7 after news of the planned merger, closing at 85. Wildrose has a 52-week trading range of 72 to $1.83 and has 22.3 million shares issued.