Benton gets sniffs at Sewell-West project

In December last year Benton Resources (BTC-V) launched a 1,476-metre drill program at its Sewell-West Timmins grass roots project in northwestern Ontario, about 60 km west of Timmins and 40 km west of Lakeshore Gold‘s (LSG-T) Timmins mine.

The program was designed to test the baseline showing Benton had identified during the summer and fall of 2011 through prospecting, mapping, IP and ground magnetometer surveys. The work identified several areas of anomalous gold mineralization, the most significant of which was the baseline showing, where forty surface grab samples collected over a strike length of 300 metres returned values ranging from trace to 5.09 grams gold per tonne.

Intercepts from the eight-hole drill program included 94.02 grams gold per tonne over 1.1 metre in hole SW11-03, 1.38 grams gold over 2.3 metres in hole SW11-06, and 1.44 grams gold over 1.1 metre in hole SW11-08. Holes SW11-01, 02, 04, 05 and 07 returned trace to weakly anomalous gold values.

“We’re not sure what it is at this point, but it was a pleasant surprise for us,” says Stephen Stares, Benton’s president and chief executive. “It was only one good one from eight but it was still a damn good intercept. It’s not one of our core projects so it was a big surprise to us and we’ll see if we can find more of it…We got lucky with one hole anyway and now we’re just planning the next phase and we’ll do another small drill campaign to follow up on it.”

Mineralization at the baseline showing is hosted within a north-northwest trending shear zone made up of strong carbonate altered mafic and lesser ultramafic volcanic rocks and highly altered sulphide-rich chert-magnetite iron formation.

The next exploration program will target the favorable gold-bearing horizon to the north and south of drill hole SW11-03 and an investigation of other zones identified on the property.

Benton optioned the thirteen claims making up the Sewell-West Timmins property in July 2011.

News of the high-grade gold intercept sent Benton’s shares up 2% to close at 51¢ within a 52-week range of 25¢-$1.45 per share. The junior has about 76.3 million shares fully diluted.

The junior currently has about $8.1 million in cash. It also owns stakes in a number of other mining companies including: 57.86 million shares in Coro Mining (COP-T); 348,000 shares in Stillwater Mining (SWC-N); 782,500 shares in Marathon Gold (MOZ-T); 1.6 million shares in Puget Ventures (PVS-V); 8.47 million shares of Mineral Mountain Resources (MMV-V);  815,000 shares of Bell Copper Corp (BCU-V); 1.67 million shares of Trillium North Minerals (TNM-V); 1.55 million shares of Golden Dory Resources (GDR-V); and three million shares of a private company called Parkside Resources.

Benton is in the process of spinning out the majority of its assets by a plan of arrangement into a new listed company in order to separate its 41.9% investment in Coro Mining from its cash, equities and exploration assets.  Benton shareholders will receive one share in this new company for each share of Benton held pursuant to regulatory approval.