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

Kivalliq Energy Corp. May 8 said it has cut deals with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., a group that oversees Inuit land claims in Nunavut, and Commander Resources Ltd. to acquire the Baffin Gold property, a 408,982-hectare (1 million acres) land package that blankets the Foxe Fold greenstone belt on Baffin Island, Nunavut.

BHP-Billiton, Falconbridge, Commander Resources and AngloGold Ashanti completed more than C$25 million of exploration on this property over a decade starting in 2001. This work includes drilling 158 holes at four prospects on the property. Highlights from this work include 4.2 meters of 21.3 grams per metric ton gold; 4.5 meters of 10.2 g/t gold and 6 meters of 9.2 g/t gold.

"Our team will benefit greatly from the significant exploration expenditures from previous operators, which generated extremely high-grade gold numbers at exploration targets that also exhibited potential for significant size and scale," said Kivalliq Energy CEO Jim Paterson.

In recent years, Kivalliq has been focused on exploration of two northern Canada uranium properties, Angilak in Nunavut and Hatchet Lake in northern Saskatchewan.

"We feel the combination of the Baffin Gold project's key attributes, including: low entry cost; high potential for discovery and expansion of known gold zones; in a mining friendly jurisdiction, make this a highly valuable acquisition for the shareholders of Kivalliq. Our group has multi-decades of experience running successful northern projects and the Baffin Gold property is a great addition to the Kivalliq portfolio," Paterson added.

-SHANE LASLEY