Golden resource at Richfield’s Blackwater (March 14, 2011)

After months of encouraging drill results, Richfield Ventures (RVC-V) has established a multi-million oz. gold resource at its Blackwater gold project in central British Columbia.

Based on 25,300 metres of drilling and a 0.4-gram-gold-per-tonne cut-off, Richfield’s initial resource estimate for Blackwater comes in at 53.46 million indicated tonnes grading 1.06 grams gold per tonne for 1.83 million contained oz. gold, plus a further 75.45 million inferred tonnes averaging 0.96 gram gold for 2.34 million contained oz.  Silver grades were 5.6 grams silver per tonne in the indicated and 4 grams silver in the inferred.

The project sits 100 km south of Vanderhoof in the Nechako Plateau, with Richfield owning 100% of the Dave and Jarrit properties that make up the southern portion of the project and 75% of the northern Davidson portion, as operator in a joint venture with Silver Quest Resources (SQI-V).

The company has concentrated closely spaced drilling on its wholly owned property so all but 331,000 tonnes of the 53.46 million indicated resource fall within the Dave and Jarrit properties. In the inferred category the spread is more balanced, with 29.2 million tonnes grading 1.04 grams gold on the Dave and Jarrit property and 46.3 million tonnes grading 0.92 gram gold on the Davidson property.

“We believe this establishes Blackwater as one of the most important new gold discoveries in Canada,” states Peter Bernier, president of Richfield, in a release. “As the gold mineralization remains essentially open in all directions, we look forward in 2011 to continuing to explore the extent of the mineralization laterally and to depth with aggressive drilling.”

The company has initiated a 30,000-metre diamond drill program for 2011, targeting both the northern and southern portions of the property. With $17.2 million on hand, Richfield can fund both the drill campaign and a preliminary economic assessment due out at the end of the year.

Richfield describes gold mineralization on the property as being a low sulphidation epithermal type deposit, hosted within a series of near-surface altered, fractured and silicified volcaniclastic rocks. Gold appears to be associated with fine-grained, disseminated and fracture-filling pyrite and sphalerite.

Early-stage metallurgical tests showed 92% gold recovery using conventional whole-ore direct cyanidation, while silver recovery was 47%.

Because the style of mineralization is unusual in the Nechako Plateau, Richfield is also planning to conduct a regional exploration program and is looking for joint venture opportunities in the area.

Richfield’s stock price climbed 42¢ or 7.4% on the news to close at $6.08, a 52-week closing high. The company hit a low of 87¢ last June and has 42.9 million shares outstanding.

Joint-venture partner Silver Quest’s shares were up 14¢ or 25.5% to close at 69¢ on 5.4 million shares traded. The company has a 52-week share price range between 32¢ and $1.05, and 92.7 million shares outstanding.