Golds add spice to stale market

Vancouver — Canada’s junior exchange maintained its rally over the week ended June 3 as investors nibbled on select gold-related issues. The S&P-TSX Venture Exchange composite index tacked on 5.84 points, or 0.5% of its value, to close at 1,090.2.

Catching the eye of investors, Bishop Resources ended the week at 12, surging 5 with just over 4.9 million shares changing hands. The company recently staked ground adjoining its Gordon Lake gold property in the Northwest Territories. The newly acquired project hosts 12 gold-bearing zones, which have been subjected to some 79 drill holes. The best results from the historic drilling include 58 grams gold per tonne over 1.3 metres and 96.7 grams gold over 0.8 metre.

Donner Minerals climbed 4, to 23, on a volume of 2.6 million shares. The company’s joint-venture partner on the South Voisey Bay nickel sulphide project in Labrador, Toronto-listed Falconbridge, has identified nine targets following a 2,200-line-km geophysical survey on the eastern half of the property. Falco can earn a half-stake in the entire project area by spending $23 million over five years.

American Bonanza Gold Mining lost 1 to finish the week at 27 with 1.5 million shares traded. The company is preparing to explore its newly acquired Gold Bar property, in the Battle Mountain-Eureka trend of central Nevada. The program will coincide with underground exploration of the Copperstone project in Arizona.

Investors snapped up shares in Radius Explorations following news of positive drill results from the Guapinol property in Guatemala. The junior’s joint-venture partner, South African-based Gold Fields, drilled 10 reverse-circulation holes to test the high-grade gold mineralization encountered in trench 29 (10.9 metres grading 66.8 grams gold per tonne). The best results came from hole 8, which returned 9.1 metres grading 21.9 grams gold. Included in this section was a bonanza-grade intercept of 81.9 grams gold over 2.3 metres. The Simon Ridgway-led company also announced that drilling has resumed on the Holly property in eastern Guatemala, where, previously, hole 4 cut 6 metres grading 43.56 grams gold and 1,617 grams silver per tonne. Pillar Resources is earning a 60% interest in the Holly project by paying Radius 500,000 and spending $4 million on exploration over three years. Radius ended the week at $1.35, up 18 on 968,000 shares traded, while Pillar closed at 87, up 4 on a volume of just over 100,000 shares.

Stock in Banro Resource rocketed higher on news it has begun reorganizing its gold concessions in the Kivu and Maniema provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The move confirms the new government will indeed return the junior’s mining assets, which were seized in July 1998. The company holds a 100% interest in the Twangiza, Kamituga, Lugushwa and Namoya gold deposits. Banro ended the week at $4.50, up $2.25 on light volume.

Shares in IMA Explorations got a boost from news that soil sampling on the highly touted Navidad silver discovery in Patagonia, Argentina, has extended the metal anomalies in soils to an overall strike length of 5.8 km. IMA ended the week up 17, to $1.17, with 856,000 shares crossing the floor.