Kaminak to spend $15 million on exploration

With more than $21 million in cash, Kaminak Gold (KAM-V) has all the money it needs for an aggressive exploration program this year at its Coffee gold project in the White Gold district of the Yukon.

The first phase of its drill program, budgeted at $15 million, will kick off in early April, with a second drill phase scheduled to follow before freeze up in the fall. 

Starting April 15, four drills will start turning on a 40,000 metre to 45,000 metre  drill program designed to establish a National Instrument 43-101 resource estimate on priority zones.

Each of the eight gold zones that were discovered last year will receive follow-up drilling. In addition, newly defined, high quality, gold-in-soil anomalies such as Americano West, Macchiato, and Sugar, will also be drill tested. The Sugar trend is 35 km southeast of Americano West and comprises a consistent 8 km by 4 km zone of elevated gold-in-soil.

The early emphasis will be on expanding the Latte, Double Double and Supremo gold trends. All of the zones start at surface and are open in all directions.

As many as 10,000 soil samples will be collected across the property, including  extensions to the existing anomalies at Coffee, systematic grid sampling over the newly defined Sugar trend gold-in-soil anomaly, and comprehensive first pass ridge and spur soil sampling across the remainder of the Coffee property.

Last year Kaminak drilled eight separate and closely spaced gold discoveries within a 10 km strike length. Discovery holes included 15.5 metres grading 17.1 grams gold per tonne in the Supremo Zone; 83.93 metres of 1.08 grams gold in the Latte Zone; 35 metres at 6.3 grams gold in the Double Double Zone; 56.75 metres at 2.21 grams gold and 23 metres at 1.92 grams gold in the Kona Zone; 18 metres of 2.36 grams gold at the Americano Zone; and 11 metres of 5.5 grams gold in the Connector Zone.

Because the Coffee property is un-glaciated, soil sampling has been a good exploration tool, the company points out. So far all of its gold discoveries have been made by drilling directly underneath gold-in-soil anomalies. About 19 km of untested soil anomalies are known on the property and these targets also will be drill tested in 2011. (Kaminak estimates just 10% of the property has seen systematic grid soil sampling.)  

At presstime in Toronto Kaminak was trading at $2.77 per share. Over the last year it has swung between a low of 62¢ per share on Jan. 12 2010 and $3.85 on September 8.

The company has about 63.2 million shares, fully diluted.