Ascot preps for 2024 Premier gold mining

Mining Explorers 2022 - January 19, 2023

 

Last updated 3/3/2023 at 6:17am

With challenging financial markets delaying Ascot Resources Ltd.'s plans to begin a new era of gold-silver production at Premier, the company focused much of its 2022 efforts on further exploration and resource upgrade drilling at the past-producing mine on the outskirts of Stewart, British Columbia.

Last operated in the 1990s, Premier already had much of the major infrastructure in place – mill, crushing and grinding circuits, tailings storage area, and hydroelectric grid power access – to resume operations.

A feasibility study completed in 2020 envisions four underground mines – Silver Coin, Big Missouri, Red Mountain, and Premier – providing ore to an updated version of the existing mill at Premier. At 2,500 metric tons per day, this operation is expected to produce roughly 1.1 million ounces of gold and 3 million oz of silver over the first eight years of the mine.


This initial output from a new era of Premier mining is based on 3.63 million metric tons of probable reserves averaging 5.45 grams per metric ton (637,000 oz) gold and 19.1 g/t (2.23 million oz) silver within the Silver Coin, Big Missouri, and Premier deposits; plus 2.55 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 6.52 g/t (534,000 oz) gold and 20.6 g/t (1.69 million oz) silver at Red Mountain.

Ascot had previously planned to resume gold production at Premier by around this time but decided to postpone operations by roughly a year due to a lack of adequate financing to complete the tailings dam, new water treatment plant, and other projects that needed to be finished during the summer.


Alaska mineral mining remote camp services environmental product sales

"The company has a limited weather window to conduct certain outdoor construction activities and needs to ensure it has sufficient funding to complete these activities and the rest of the project," Ascot Resources President and CEO Derek White said in June.

Ascot decided to use the funds it had to continue underground development at Big Missouri, the first deposit to be mined, and continue exploration and resource upgrade drilling across the Premier property.

Premier gold extension

The 2022 drilling began at Sebakwe, a new zone that appears to represent an unmined structure immediately north of the Northern Light and Premier zones of the Premier deposit.


Hole P21-2385, completed during the 2021 discovery drilling at Sebakwe, cut one meter averaging 29.6 g/t gold and 5.3 g/t silver from a depth of 328.5 meters, and 7.1 meters averaging 36.17 g/t gold and 20.6 g/t silver from a depth of 368.3 meters.

Ascot had originally planned to follow up on this discovery only about 600 meters away from the mill with roughly 4,000 meters of drilling in 10 holes. Given the visible gold and visual indicators in the core from the first holes drilled, the program was expanded to 6,091 meters in 15 holes.

Early results from the 2022 Sebakwe drilling included hole P22-2393, which cut three zones of strong gold mineralization – one meter averaging 193 g/t gold and 41.8 g/t silver from a depth of 315 meters; 4.5 meters averaging 4.77 g/t gold and 18.2 g/t silver from a depth of 331 meters; and three meters averaging 17.78 g/t gold and 20.1 g/t silver from a depth of 366 meters.


Other highlights from Sebakwe include:

2.73 meters averaging 11.83 g/t gold and 56.3 g/t silver from a depth of 335.5 meters in hole P22-2394.

3.2 meters averaging 6.33 g/t gold and 6.6 g/t silver from a depth of 290.1 meters in hole P22-2396.

"We look forward to the future of the Sebakwe Zone and continuing to demonstrate it as an accretive, near-mine exploration success and potential to grow our resource base for development near planned underground infrastructure," said White.

Improving Big Missouri

In addition to the discovery drilling at Sebakwe, Ascot completed surface drilling at Big Missouri, a deposit about 3.7 miles (six kilometers) north of the Premier mill that hosts 809,000 metric tons of probable reserve averaging 7.15 g/t (186,000 oz) gold and 12.2 g/t (317,000 oz) silver.

Highlights from the 2022 surface drilling at Big Missouri include:

12 meters averaging 5.09 g/t gold and 6.6 g/t silver from a depth of 37.5 meters in hole P22-2404.

Two meters averaging 71.28 g/t gold and 23 g/t silver from a depth of 57.7 meters in hole P22-2405.

14.65 meters averaging 3.28 g/t gold and 7.4 g/t silver from a depth of 78.3 meters in hole P22-2412.

Eight meters averaging 15.91 g/t gold and 31.5 g/t silver from a depth of 90.5 meters in hole P22-2420.

10.69 meters averaging 31.92 g/t gold and 22.21 g/t silver 10.7 meters from a depth of 90 meters in hole P22-2428, including one meter averaging 330 g/t gold and 192 g/t silver.

"While we are pleased with these high grades, we are even more encouraged that the majority of the intercepts were encountered within or close to existing block model wireframes and in potential extensions of those wireframes, further validating the resource model at the Premier Gold Project," said White.

Ascot hopes to begin feeding Big Missouri ore into the Premier Mill by early 2024.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Author photo

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.

 

Reader Comments(0)

 
 

Powered by ROAR Online Publication Software from Lions Light Corporation
© Copyright 2024

Rendered 03/25/2024 19:15