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

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. Jan. 20 reported it has added roughly 2 million ounces of gold to the mineral resources at Back River, which will serve as the basis for an updated feasibility study for the gold mine project in Nunavut.

Back River now hosts 33.45 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 5.88 grams per metric ton (6.32 million oz) gold; and 13.79 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 6.44 g/t (2.86 million oz) gold.

"Since our acquisition of the Back River project in 2009, Sabina has delivered tremendous growth in the global resource for the project along with an improved understanding of the geologic model," said Sabina Gold President and CEO Bruce McLeod. "With over 565,000 meters of drilling completed, these deposits are well understood with the majority of the resources in the M&I categories."

Since 2014, the last time a resource calculation was completed for Back River, Sabina has focused its drilling on discovering and delineating several new high-grade mineralized zones at Goose, the location of the proposed mine on the larger Back River property.

Overall, 988,000 oz were added to the measured and indicated categories, an increase of 18.5% since 2014; and 1.01 million oz were added to the Inferred category, a 54.3% jump over the previous estimate.

Most of the additional inferred resource is found at the Llama Extension and Nuvuyak discoveries, higher grade underground deposits with the potential to extend the life of a mine at Goose with further drilling.

"While the 2020 drilling season was limited due to COVID-19 restrictions, I am pleased that we were able to complete inferred resource estimates on the new discoveries at Nuvuyak and Llama Extension," said McLeod. "Historically, we have seen a conversion rate of approximately 73% when upgrading mineral resources to mineral reserves, and we expect a similar rate when converting these new discoveries into mineral reserves in the future."

Much of the expanded measured and indicated resources are expected to be upgraded to reserves upon completion of the updated feasibility study for the Goose Mine.

Under the previous feasibility study, ore mined from four deposits – Goose, Llama, Umwelt, and Umwelt Underground – would feed a 3,000-metric-ton-per-day mill forecast to produce an average of roughly 200,000 oz of gold per year over an 11.8-year mine life.

This 2015 study was based on 28.2 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 5.87 g/t (5.33 million oz) gold; and 7.75 million metric tons of inferred resources averaging 7.43 g/t (1.85 million oz) gold.

Sabina will now investigate the potential of mining high-grade underground gold mineralization tapped in the V2 zone early in the mine life.

Sabina Gold & Silver Corp.

"The work completed in 2020, such as delineating the V2 high-grade underground zone has provided opportunity and flexibility for the mine plan going forward. We are excited to incorporate these high-grade zones, along with other scope changes and updated costs in the UFS (updated feasibility study) to be announced later this quarter," said McLeod. "The impact of this new resource estimate, and in particular the high-grade zones at Umwelt Underground on the upcoming reserve estimate, could extend mine life and bring us closer to our target of producing 300,000 oz of gold a year."

More information on the updated Goose Mine feasibility study can be read at Updated Goose gold mine study underway in the Dec. 4 edition of North of 60 Mining News.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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