North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

After raising C$7.3 million in May, Freegold Ventures Ltd. returned to work at its Shorty Creek and Golden Summit projects in Interior Alaska.

The company kicked off drilling at Shorty Creek, a 26,000-acre porphyry copper-gold project located near Livengood, in July.

Since securing a long-term lease with Fairbanks-based Gold Range Ltd. in 2014, Freegold has carried out systematic geophysics and soil sampling over two target areas - Hill 1835 and Hill 1710.

Drilling in 2015 further demonstrated the copper-gold potential at Shorty Creek. Three of the four holes drilled at Hill 1835 in 2015 intersected quartz feldspar porphyry, supporting the idea that this area may host a significant porphyry copper-gold deposit. The best hole, SC15-03, cut 91 meters averaging 0.71 percent copper-equivalent.

Results indicate that a magnetic high situated roughly 250 meters southwest of hole 15-03 hosts the highest grade copper mineralization.

Collared about 125 meters southwest of SC 15-03, the first hole of the 2016 drill program, SC 16-01, cut 434.5 meters averaging 0.12 g/t gold, 7.46 g/t silver and 0.36 percent copper.

This broad intercept included a higher-grade interval of 207 meters grading 0.16 g/t gold, 9.6 g/t silver and 0.45 percent copper.

The bottom 12 meters of the hole averaged 0.145 g/t gold, 9.67 g/t silver and 0.55 percent copper, or 0.82 percent copper-equivalent - indicating expansion of higher grade mineralization at depth.

The second target of the program, Hill 1710, is situated roughly 2,500 meters northwest of Hill 1835. A series of magnetic highs identified at Hill 1710 blanket a 6,000- by 1,500-meter area with high coincident (up to 669 parts per million) copper and (up to 235 ppm) molybdenum in soil geochemistry.

In May, Freegold published a preliminary economic assessment for its Golden Summit property located four miles (seven kilometers) north of Kinross Gold's Fort Knox gold mine. The PEA evaluates a 20,000 metric-ton-per-day operation - 10,000 tpd heap leach facility to process the oxide material and 10,000 tpd bio-oxidation plant for the sulfide material - that averages around 96,000 oz. of gold annually over a 24-year mine life.

Initial capital costs for this mine are forecast to total only US$88 million and another US$348 million for life-of-mine sustaining costs.

Freegold plans to continue to expand the oxide resource at Golden Summit with shallow drilling.

-SHANE LASLEY