Claude adds ounces at Seabee (November 19, 2007)

Saskatoon, Sask.-based gold miner Claude Resources (CRJ-T, CGR-X) has added to gold reserves at its underground Seabee mine in northeastern Saskatchewan.

As of Sept. 30, Seabee hosted 984,200 tonnes of reserves grading 6.67 grams gold per tonne, or 211,100 contained ounces gold.

This compares with year-end 2007’s 692,500 tonnes of 6.59 grams gold, or 146,700 contained ounces gold.

The new reserve estimate doesn’t take into account late October’s good news that mine-site exploration is indicating new mineralization at depth at Seabee.

Claude’s latest drilling has cut gold mineralization in 11 holes on the 2C9709 zone, downdip from known resources at Seabee. True mineralized widths in the zone ranged from 1 to 9 metres.

Among the better intersections were 9 metres grading 15 grams gold per tonne, cut to 8 grams when high assays were limited to 50 grams per tonne, and 3.5 metres grading 83.3 grams gold per tonne, or 31.8 grams per tonne after cutting. Cut grades were mostly between 5 and 20 grams per tonne.

Earlier results on the 2B9714 zone, about 500 metres east of the 2C9709 zone, showed mineralized true widths mainly between 2 and 6 metres, with grades mostly in the 6- to 12-gram range.

At presstime Claude hadn’t reported its third-quarter financials, but it has stated that third-quarter production totalled 15,090 oz. gold from both Seabee and a satellite deposit named the Santoy 7 project.

The company describes this output as a 35% increase over the 11,200 oz. gold produced on average over the past 20 quarters and a “significant improvement” over each of the first two quarters of this year, thanks to the contribution from Santoy 7.

Claude has mined 775,000 oz. gold from Seabee since 1991.

The company also owns the Madsen property in northwestern Ontario’s Red Lake camp.