TSX Venture posts gains, July 24-28

The S&P/TSX Venture Composite Index gained 11.92 points to a 772.57-point close, as spot gold prices rose US$14.66 to US$1,269.64 per oz., while Comex copper prices surged  US16¢ to US$2.88 per lb. on news of Chinese restrictions on scrap imports, which could  increase demand for imported refined copper.

Australian explorer Novo Resources led the value-added category, with shares gaining 82¢ to $2.67. On July 12, the company said it found gold nuggets up to 4 cm long while excavating a 700-kilogram bulk sample at its Purdy’s Reward gold prospect, 45 km south of Karratha, Western Australia. The company says the gold is hosted within unmapped conglomerates at the base of the Archean-age Fortescue Group, which is the same unit that hosts Novo’s Beatons Creek gold project, 350 km east.

GT Gold was a front-runner in the value-added category, with shares gaining 66¢ to $1.03 after the company revealed a high-grade gold discovery at its Tatogga gold property in northwestern B.C.’s Golden Triangle. The company targeted a gold-in-soil anomaly with reverse-circulation drilling at its Saddle South prospect, and intercepted gold mineralization within an east-trending, steeply dipping structure across a 200-metre strike length to 213 metres deep. Intercepts include 13.03 grams gold per tonne over 10.7 metres and 8.75 grams gold over 8.5 metres. A second diamond-drilling phase totalling 2,500 metres is underway, along with an 18 line km induced-polarization (IP) geophysical survey. Drilling will also test the project’s Saddle North geochemical target, which coincides with a kilometre-long, open-ended IP anomaly that spans 200 metres wide. The line spacing on the survey was completed at 200-metre centres.

Shares of Garibaldi Resources gained 11¢ to 27¢ on news of a surface discovery at the firm’s E&L nickel-copper project in northwest B.C.’s Eskay camp. The company has found pyrrhotite-chalcopyrite mineralization in gabbroic rocks over a 300- by 700-metre area. The prospect, known as Anomaly A, is located 6 km north–northeast of the project’s Anomaly D target, which the company plans to drill this year. Historical drilling at Anomaly D in the 1960s outlined a magmatic nickel-copper system extending 175 metres east–west, highlighted by a 37.8-metre drill intercept of 1.3% nickel and 0.79% copper.

GoldMining acquired its Yellowknife and Big Sky gold properties in the Northwest Territories, driving shares of the company up 24¢ to $1.93. The properties cover 35 km of the prospective Yellowknife greenstone belt, which produced 15 million oz. gold from the Con, Giant and Discovery mines. The company intends to update the current resource estimate by examining the cut-off, and verify the historic sampling.