Venture Exchange slips as gold dips

Vancouver — Canada’s junior exchange took a breather over the week ended Jan. 28. The S&P-TSX composite index slipped 8.99 points, or 0.8% of its value, to close at 1114.42.

Quaterra Resources was the most active miner, with 6.6 million shares traded. It ended the week at 20, up 4. The junior has been working the Duke Island nickel-copper-platinum-palladium project in Alaska.

American Bonanza Gold Mines jumped 5 and closed at 31 on a volume of 5.2 million shares. Management has mobilized personnel and equipment to the Copperstone gold project in Arizona, where underground drifting will resume. Drilling, blasting and mucking are already under way, the objective being to extend the decline to the bonanza-grade mineralization of the D-Zone. At the Pamlico project in Nevada, the company drilled eight holes with a combined length of 490 metres. Results are pending.

Spider Resources found a penny and closed at 6 with 4.9 million shares traded. The company holds diamond interests in both Ontario and Brazil.

Oasis Diamond Exploration closed the week flat at 11 with 3.8 million shares traded. It recently began drilling the Sigma target on the Enigma diamond property in Ontario.

ECU Silver Mining lost 3 and closed at 9 with 3.3 million shares crossing the floor. The company holds the Velardena silver-gold mine in Mexico, which hosts a proven and probable reserve of 275,976 tonnes averaging 198 grams silver and 3.42 grams gold per tonne.

New Blue Ribbon Resources closed the week up 2 to 3 on 2.5 million shares. Recently, the junior started trading on the Venture Exchange as Blue Diamond Mining under the symbol bdm.

Desert Sun Mining closed at $1, down 1, on 2.2 million shares. To complete a prefeasibility study of the Jacobina mine in northeastern Brazil, the company has hired SNC-Lavalin Engineers & Constructors. A preliminary scoping study indicated that at US$300-per-oz. gold, the mine could produce 73,000 oz. gold per year at a cash cost of US$188 per oz. Startup capital expenditures are pegged at US$16 million.

TNR Resources closed at 19, down 2 with almost 1.9 million shares changing hands. TNR and its partner, Toronto-listed NovaGold, are accepting bids from independent engineering firms to complete assessment work at the Rock Creek deposit in Alaska, and to recalculate the resource. The measured and indicated figure amounts to 555,000 oz. gold at a grade of 2.74 grams gold per tonne, and there’s an additional inferred resource of 303,000 oz. gold grading 2.78 grams.

Pele Mountain Resources dropped 2 and closed at 19 on 1.7 million shares. The company found a big diamond at its wholly owned Festival property in Wawa, Ont. The 0.72-carat, white, gem-quality stone is the biggest diamond recovered from bedrock in the area. It measures 4.42 by 4.28 by 3.58 mm and was recovered from a 13-tonne bedrock sample blasted from Pele’s Cristal diamond occurrence. Also recovered were 39 commercial-size diamonds with a square mesh sieve size exceeding 0.85 mm. The total aggregate weight of the commercial size diamonds is 1.142 carats.