Seabridge Gold (TSX: SEA) (NYSE: SA) has achieved its 2023 goal of finding a new porphyry mineral system from drilling on the Snip North target of its Iskut property in northwest British Columbia.
The new discovery consists of the intact, well-preserved upper parts of a copper-gold porphyry that the company identifies as an intermediate sulfidation epithermal occurrence. Work is to use drill hole data to vector towards the large intrusive source for the pervasive mineralization found to date.
The 2023 program at Snip North was designed to evaluate historical drill data where it coincides with a northeast trending structural trend in which nearly all the significant mineral targets at the Iskut project occur. Six diamond drill holes totaling 5,184 metres were drilled across the northeast striking structural trend to evaluate its mineral occurrences and associated host rocks.
“At Snip North, we have extensive evidence of gold-copper mineralization in historical drilling supported by our deep penetrating geophysical surveys,” chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk said in a press release. “Snip North lines up with our regional interpretation of mineral deposition at Iskut.”
The Seabridge executive also noted that the last three holes of the drilling each returned widths of 200 plus metres of gold ranging from 0.48 to 0.80 gram per tonne.
“We are clearly at the top of the system with the intrusive target below us. Our drill results should enable us to vector towards improving mineralization including what we expect will be higher copper grades,” Fronk added.
Copper-gold system
Snip North is one of several recognized mineral occurrences at Iskut that are interpreted as high-level expressions of copper-gold porphyry systems aligned along a regional northeast structural trend. The trend, according to Seabridge, has similar characteristics to the one that hosts a cluster of porphyry systems defined at its nearby KSM project.
The Iskut project comprises a contiguous block of mineral claims covering over 22.2 sq. km of BC’s Golden Triangle, and is situated about 30 km northeast of Seabridge’s KSM deposits. The property is host to a former underground mine that produced 90,500 oz. of gold, 19,800 oz. of silver and 2.2 million lb. of copper over an approximate two-year period.
The project, including the closed mine, was acquired in June 2016 through Seabridge’s takeover of then TSX-V-listed SnipGold.
Shares of Seabridge Gold closed 1.7% higher on Thursday at $16.28 apiece. The Toronto-based miner has a market capitalization of $1.4 billion.
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