Victoria Gold gets busy in Nevada

Nevada-focused Victoria Gold (VIT-V, VITFF-O) plans to focus on five core projects this year, be it drilling, engineering work, or scoping studies, spending about $2.5 million from its treasury.

The company says it wants to contain costs as much as possible over 2009, and with its current budget, it won’t be left with zero at the end of the year.

Victoria completed a $4 million financing in December, adding to the $3.9 million it had as of Nov. 30.

At the end of January, the company said that a drill was ready to go at the Cove gold project, about 50 km south of Battle Mountain, where the company discovered the Helen zone in 2008.

The Helen zone is about 600 metres northwest of the Cove open pit which produced 2.3 million oz. of gold and 100 million oz. of silver when it was in production between 1987 and 2001.

Victoria plans to drill two holes at the Helen zone – NW-14 and 15, which will test the depth extension, and possibly a few other exploration holes on the property.

Hole 13, drilled below 600 metres depth, returned some impressive grades including 29 metres grading 16.8 grams gold per tonne from 610 metres to 640 metres depth. That intercept included 14.6 metres grading 27.5 grams gold per tonne, 8.5 metres grading 37.3 grams gold per tonne and 2.8 metres grading 77.9 grams gold per tonne.

The company believes the Helen zone is not an extension of the Cove pit, but instead an entirely new gold zone.

Engineering designs along with the permitting of a decline into the Helen zone for underground exploring are also planned for this year.

A second mine, the McCoy open pit, is also on the property. It’s 2 km from the Helen zone and produced about 880,000 oz. of gold and 3 million oz. silver between 1986 and 2001.

Victoria plans to get started on it’s newly acquired Santa Fe project, about 50 miles northeast of Hawthorne in Mineral County, an addition from the Gateway Gold merger in late 2008. The Santa Fe property includes a former mine that produced 350,000 oz. gold and 500,000 oz. silver from several open pits. Victoria will investigate some mineralized zones discovered by Gateway last year for a future drill program.

Another former mine site, the Big Springs project, about 100 km north of Elko, Elko County, has an inferred resource of 1.2 million oz. with an average grade around 2.2 grams gold per tonne. (converted from 0.078 oz. per tonne). Victoria says it will start a scoping study to see if mining the resource and processing the ore at nearby mills would be economic. Surface mapping, followed by drilling is also on the to-do list but first the company needs the necessary drill permits.

Another scoping study will be started on the Mill Canyon project, which is next to Barrick Gold’s massive Cortez mine and Cortez Hills development project. Victoria will focus the study on the higher open cut target and identify new drill targets. Mill Canyon is about 120 km southeast of Battle Mountain.

Victoria wants to get started on the Summit project this year too, but is still awaiting drill permits. Victoria says it has taken some promising surface samples from the property and that previous companies have gotten some solid drill results in the past. A small open pit produced 8,800 oz. of gold in the 1980s. Summit is about 130 km northeast of Hawthorne in Nye County.