Beginning this summer, the company will investigate the possibility of re-leaching old leach pads, which hold more than 10 million tons of previously leached gold ore. Drilling on the leach pads by a previous operator returned up to 0.105 oz. gold per ton over 5 ft. Further drilling would provide material for assaying and metallurgical tests. Pending positive results, construction of a new leach pad would follow.
The next phase involves evaluating oxide material, which would be transported to the proposed new leach pad. Golden Phoenix has targeted the fringes of the old Borealis, East Ridge, and Northeast Ridge pits. Several previous holes returned mineralization between the Polaris and East Ridge pits.
Finally, Golden Phoenix intends to evaluate high-grade sulphide mineralization on the property. The best prospect is the Graben deposit, which makes up a large portion of Borealis’s resource. Drilling has already cut up to 25 ft. running 2.03 oz. Drilling beneath the Freedom Flats pit was highlighted by 50 ft. grading 0.828 oz. Other targets are found below the old Borealis pit and under the Northeast and East Ridge zones.
At last report, Borealis’s measured and indicated resources were 33.4 million tons averaging 0.044 oz. gold and 0.228 oz. silver per ton.
Borealis is in the prolific Walker Lane gold belt. Gold was discovered on the property in 1978 by Houston Oil & Minerals Co., Tenneco Resources and Echo Bay Minerals operated an open-pit, heap-leach mine and produced 635,000 oz. gold from 10.7 million tons between 1981 and 1991.
Gold mineralization is characterized by large areas of silicification, hydrothermal brecciation and advanced argillic alteration in Tertiary andesite flows, breccias and tuffs. Economic deposits are structurally controlled along a series of north-to-east-striking normal faults that dip steeply to the northwest, with gold occurring as sub-micron-size particles in highly altered andesite and tuff.
The Borealis property is divided into three mineralized zones: Borealis, Polaris and Orion. Each, in turn, comprises three separate targets, some of which have been mined. Several other target areas have yet to be explored.
In early 2002, citing some “underlying lease issues” that arose during its due diligence, Golden Phoenix nixed a letter of agreement to sell Borealis to
Golden Phoenix had hoped to use the proceeds to help bring its Mineral Ridge mine in southwestern Nevada back into production.
At Mineral Ridge, Golden Phoenix recently submitted the final revisions to its plan of operations and reclamation to the Bureau of Land Management and the Nevada Dept. of Environmental Protection.
Initially, Golden Phoenix hopes to extract gold from the former producer’s leach pad by adding cyanide to the leach solutions. In the longer term, the company would carry out open-pit and possibly underground mining of a reserve pegged at 2.7 million tons averaging 0.079 oz. gold per ton.
Be the first to comment on "Golden Phoenix plans attack at Borealis (March 03, 2003)"