Strongbow shoots up market

Strongbow Exploration‘s (SBW-V) surge up the market comes a day after releasing drill results from its partly owned Skoonka Creek gold property in southwestern British Columbia.

In Toronto on Tuesday, Nov. 29, Strongbow is up 32% or 8 to 33 on 580,000 shares.

Strongbow’s president and chief executive, Ken Armstrong, says the market’s bullishness is in-line with drill results that were highlighted by 18.4 grams gold a tonne over 12.8 metres.

“This is a very good gold result for a first-pass drill program on a property that hasn’t been drilled before,” Armstrong says.

In all 11 holes were drilled at Skoonka. The Nov. 28 press release says gold mineralization was traced over a strike length of 350 metres, intersecting alteration quartz veining typical of low sulphidation epithermal gold systems.

First discovered by Almaden Minerals (AMM-T), Skoonka is a 10,160 hectare property that lies on what the press release describes as, “the emerging Spences Bridge gold belt.”

Only a three-hour drive from Strongbow’s head offices in downtown Vancouver, Armstrong says the property is exciting in that it represents a new gold discovery in a province that has had few in recent years.

“It’s very well located,” Armstrong says of the property that is just 10 km from the Trans-Canada Highway. Armstrong offered that perhaps the poor mineral exposure of the property resulted in its not being targeted by prospectors at an earlier date.

“It’s an area that for whatever reason hadn’t been (properly) explored,” he says.

Strongbow can claim 60% of Skoonka by paying Almaden $4 million and 1 million of Strongbow shares within six years.

In Toronto on Tuesday afternoon, Almaden is up roughly 6% or 11 to $1.96 roughly 90,000 shares.

While Strongbow has prospective properties across Canada for commodities such as diamonds, nickel and base metals, Armstrong says the results from October’s drilling at Skoonka bump it up the priority chart.

Still he has no plans to change the company’s philosophy of investing in properties that stretch across the commodity spectrum.

“We largely look at ourselves as an exploration company,” Armstrong says. “We’re not specific to one commodity or specific to one geographical area.”

But to finance such explorations, Strongbow will have to find new capital –it has eight other properties ready for drilling in 2006.

Armstrong says some form of financing will be done by the end of this year or the beginning of next.

He says while a private placement is a possibility, he is wary of share dilution. In lieu of a private placement, Armstrong says Strongbow has 4 million shares of Tournigan Gold (TVC-T), which could be sold for roughly $2 million dollars.

In Toronto on Tuesday afternoon Tournigan is trading at 55.

Armstrong, a geologist, was promoted to president and chief executive from vice-president of operations in January of this year. He first met Grenville Thomas — Strongbow’s chairman and founder of what is now Aber Diamond (ABZ-T) — in 1997 while working for Diavik Diamond Mines, a unit of Rio Tinto (RTP-N, RIO-L), at the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories.