Rubicon intercepts more high-grade gold at Phoenix project

Rubicon Minerals‘ (RMX-T, RBY-X) ambitious drill program at its Phoenix project in Red Lake, Ont. is resulting in some high grade gold intercepts.

Rubicon is focusing on a 1.2 km by 1.6 km area known as the F2 gold system where the company has already drilled about 100,000 metres. Rubicon is working towards completing a total 158,000 metres of drilling on the project.

In the southern part of F2, hole 122-40 returned 14.3 metres grading 20.7 grams gold per tonne. The company says visible gold was seen in several sections of drill core, including a short intercept of 50 centimetres grading 493.6 grams gold per tonne.

This hole, drilled from underground, is located about 230 metres south and 208 metres above a previously reported hole (122-10) which returned 44.9 metres grading 13.7 grams gold per tonne.

Rubicon believes these results imply that there is potential for both high-grade and broad gold zones in this area.

Over in the central area of F2, hole 122-39 returned 3.5 metres grading 64.9 grams gold per tonne including 50 centimetres grading 444.7 grams gold per tonne, showing the presence of significant grades beneath the core area of drilling – beyond 800 metres depth. This hole was drilled from underground as well.

Another hole in the central area, F2-64-W2, was drilled from surface and returned 3.4 metres grading 16.8 grams gold per tonne and 1.5 metres grading 11.2 grams gold per tonne. The intercepts were about 1328 metres below surface in the core F2 drilling area.

Rubicon discovered the F2 zone in March 2008. As the company continued to drill, it encountered more and more gold mineralization, including bonanza grade gold. The company decided to de-water and deepen the shaft, originally constructed in the 1950s, for a massive drill program.

The project is located nearly Goldcorp’s (G-T, GG-N) high-grade Red Lake mine and Rob McEwen, former Goldcorp chairman and CEO of McEwen Capital owns 21.4% of Rubicon.

Rubicon shares were up about 5% on the news, or 25, to $4.84 apiece on a trading volume of 691,000 shares.