The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Aug:TSX.V / ggtcf:OTCQX
Executive Chairman: Ivan Bebek President and CEO: Shawn Wallace
After buying out North Country Gold Corp., Auryn Resources Inc. added the Committee Bay gold project, making it a major player in Nunavut gold exploration.
Auryn's interest in the Committee Bay project first came to light in February when the company agreed to join North Country in a joint venture on the expansive gold property.
This JV agreement, which was finalized in March, included Auryn buying 10 million North Country shares at C5 cents each.
By the end of June, this JV had transitioned into a full-fledged merger in which Auryn agreed to issue about 13.8 million Auryn shares valued at roughly C$20.4 million, to buy North Country Gold.
As a result, North Country shareholders received one Auryn share for each 10 North Country common shares held.
Over the past two decades North Country Gold and earlier iterations of the company has identified more than 50 gold occurrences along the 300-kilometer- (186 miles) long Committee Bay Greenstone Belt, including the 1.6-million-ounce Three Bluffs gold deposit.
Instead of expansion of the known deposits, Auryn wants to take a closer look at the larger potential of the expansive property.
Though the merger was not finalized until September, Auryn and North Country forged ahead with a C$4 million program that focused on testing some high-priority exploration targets stretching for some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Three Bluffs.
In order to keep the costs down, the Committee Bay JV employed an innovative approach to exploring the Arctic project.
These new exploration techniques included the use of a lightweight rotary air rig to carry out the drilling; a drone to capture 10-centimeter resolution aerial imagery across the entire project area; 60 line-kilometers of induced polarization geophysics; structural mapping; and a till sampling program utilizing bulk cyanide leach methodology.
The company's used these relatively low-cost techniques to test a number of targets located along a 100-kilometer (60 miles) stretch of highly prospective structures identified in the southwestern third of the Committee Bay Greenstone Belt.
This work centered on Raven, a prospect about 50 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of the Three Bluffs deposit, a prospect located about 60 kilometers (35 miles) further southwest.
Rock samples hammered off a 500-meter-long outcrop at Raven have returned assays containing as much as 143.9 grams per metric ton gold.
A small amount of drilling has been completed at the western end of the outcrop, including two holes drilled in 2005 that cut 2.4 meters of 36.22 g/t gold and 5.5 meters averaging 12.6 g/t gold.
In addition to historical drill targets, the partners have identified numerous untested targets spanning more than 50 kilometers (30 miles) of banded iron formations and intersecting fault zones in the Raven project area.
Located at the southwestern end of the Committee Bay property and only about 180 kilometers (110 miles) northeast of Agnico Eagle's Meadowbank Mine, the West plains project area covers another large swath of highly prospective banded iron formation.
The West Plains prospect, itself, is characterized by a number of magnetic and electromagnetic ridges, which have been interpreted as sheared volcanics and iron formation.
A number of past holes drilled at West Plains have tapped nice intercepts of high-grade gold including: 8.7 meters of 14.76 g/t gold drilled in 2004; eight meters of 13.14 g/t gold drilled in 2006; and 25.1 meters of 4.1 g/t gold in a hole drilled in 2011.
Pickle, situated some 11.5 kilometers (seven miles) northeast of the West Plains prospect, hosts a 2,400- by 1,000-meter intense magnetic anomaly.
Altered volcanic rocks gathered from Quartzite Ridge, a prospect about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of West Plains, have returned assays as high as 37.7 g/t gold.
Cash and short-term deposits: C$7.6 million (March 31, 2015)
Working capital: C$7.9 million (March 31, 2015; closed C$5.8 million
financing on Sept. 18)
Market capitalization: C$36.8 million (Sept. 18, 2015)
600 -1199 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, British Columbia Canada V6E 3T5
Tel: 778-729-0600 Fax: 778-729-0650
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