New gold belt lures Barrick

Vancouver — A letter agreement between Rimfire Minerals (RFM-V) and Barrick Gold (ABX-T) is renewing interest in the gold potential of the Atlin region of northwestern British Columbia.

The companies plan to explore a newly recognized belt of volcanic and associated intrusive rocks believed to have potential for hosting high-sulphidation gold systems.

Rimfire President David Caulfield says his company is pleased to team up with Barrick, “an acknowledged world expert” of these types of deposits.

The terms of the preliminary agreement call for Barrick and Rimfire to form a 50-50 joint venture to explore the Kizmet project, 95 km southeast of the historic mining camp. The Atlin region hosts numerous mineral deposits and occurrences, as well as some active placer-gold mines.

Rimfire picked up ground in the region in 2003 and early 2004, after mapping and age-dating a Cretaceous-aged belt of volcanic and associated intrusive rocks, with coincident strong, gold-silver-arsenic geochemical signature, as noted in government geochemical silt-sampling.

Rimfire saw geological similarities to its Thorn property, also in the Atlin region. This project is being explored by 51% partner Cangold (CLD-V).

Early this year, the junior companies reported the discovery of a new zone of gold-silver-copper mineralization at Thorn. The discovery hole intersected 56.1 metres grading 1.27 grams gold and 16.7 grams silver per tonne, plus 0.19% copper, including a 3.6-metre interval of 4.4 grams gold, 65.3 grams silver and 0.65% copper.

Rimfire acquired additional targets totalling 185 sq. km, then carried out reconnaissance exploration over four target areas, with “positive results.”

The project caught the interest of Barrick, which, as a first step, must pay $75,000 to Rimfire and add claims totalling 680 sq. km to the Kizmet joint venture. The major can boost its interest to 65% by spending US$1.2 million on exploration over three years, and up to 75% by spending at least US$500,000 per year prior to the feasibility stage.

Print

Be the first to comment on "New gold belt lures Barrick"

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.


*


By continuing to browse you agree to our use of cookies. To learn more, click more information

Dear user, please be aware that we use cookies to help users navigate our website content and to help us understand how we can improve the user experience. If you have ideas for how we can improve our services, we’d love to hear from you. Click here to email us. By continuing to browse you agree to our use of cookies. Please see our Privacy & Cookie Usage Policy to learn more.

Close