Revival Gold tables maiden resource at Beartrack

Like its name implies, Revival Gold (TSXV: RVG; US-OTCQB: RVLGF) aims to bring brownfield and past-producing gold projects back to life.

The company is focused on reviving its past-producing Beartrack gold project in Idaho. It moved a little closer to that goal at the end of May, when it announced the project’s maiden resource estimate.

Beartrack has 33.4 million indicated tonnes grading 1.13 grams gold per tonne for 1.2 million oz. gold, as well as 16.9 million inferred tonnes at 1.41 grams gold for 765,000 oz. gold.

Meridian Gold ran an open-pit, heap-leach oxide gold mine on the property in the 1990s. It produced a little over 600,000 oz. gold in six years. When Meridian shifted its focus to the El Pinon underground gold mine in Chile, it left behind leach ponds, buildings, and other infrastructure that Revival could refurbish if it moved back into production.

“They walked away from quite a bit of oxide and transition and sulphide material at Beartrack,” Revival president and CEO Hugh Agro says from the company’s Toronto office in an interview with The Northern Miner. “For them, at sub US$300 per oz. gold prices at the time, it really didn’t make a lot of sense.”

He says the project sits on federally regulated land, which had posed another problem for Meridian. At the time, permitting ground was becoming more challenging in the U.S., and it was often easier to go elsewhere.

“There’s interest now from the federal government to see responsible mining move ahead,” Agro says. “We’ve also got solid support from local and state governments.”

Revival began three years ago when Agro started “to get fixated on what’s happening in the gold industry right now, which is this huge and growing gap between the pace of discovery and the pace of production.”

He points to a graph we have all seen before: Global gold discoveries have declined each year since 2006 — when they roughly totalled 110 million oz. — while global gold production has grown from 80 million oz. in 2006 to more than 90 million oz. in 2017.

Agro had previously retired after a stint as executive vice-president of Kinross Gold (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC). Inspired by what he saw as a growing opportunity in the industry, he set about restructuring a shell company called Strata Minerals to form Revival Gold two years ago.

The company began in 2017 with an initial 8 sq. km land position in Idaho consisting of 95 claims from three vendors that it consolidated to form the Arnett Creek gold project. The company changed its name to Revival midway through the year and staked another 195 claims, bringing its Arnett Creek land position to 24 square kilometres.

Looking south over Beartrack’s South Pit. Credit: Revival Gold.

It then entered an earn-in agreement with Yamana Gold (TSX: YRI; NYSE: AUY) for Beartrack in September 2017. Yamana had acquired Meridian — and Beartrack along with it — in 2007, for $3.5 billion.

“We went in to Yamana and said, ‘Look, we’ve got the neighbouring land position. We have this super team and you guys know us really well. We’re the kind of team that you can vend this asset off to and feel comfort that we’re going to look after it properly and deliver full value,’” Agro says.

Revival paid US$250,000 and 1 million shares to Yamana for Beartrack. It will pay another 3 million shares over the next four years and assume US$1.7 million in remediation costs during the third and fourth years of the earn-in.

On top of that, Revival will spend US$10 million in exploration — including US$4 million by Aug. 31, 2019. Yamana will keep a 1% net smelter return royalty and the right to the greater of US$6 per oz. resource or US$15 per oz. reserve in the agreement’s seventh year.

Revival drilled 3,000 metres at Beartrack in 2017, beginning in late September and finishing in early November. It combined its own data with 10,000 metres Yamana drilled in 2012 and 2013, but never integrated into its geological model, and 58,000 metres of historical drilling. Before Revival, the resource had not been updated since the early 2000s.

“Unlike a lot of our peers, rather than just pick up a bunch of old drill data and come up with a resource, we actually did confirmation drilling,” Agro says. “We drilled on the fringes and through the existing drill data, and the whole purpose of that was to be able to say, geostatistically, there’s a strong correlation between what was drilled in the past and what we’re seeing today.”

The company didn’t incorporate all its historical data, however. It says it threw out a lot of reverse-circulation drilling from the 1980s that it wasn’t comfortable with, and has kept 450 holes to reinterpret the geology.

A drill rig at Revival Gold’s Beartrack gold project in Idaho last May. Credit: Revival Gold.

This year, Revival will spend $4.5 million drilling 8,000 metres at Beartrack. So far the company has found mineralization at five targets along a northeast–southwest trend. In particular, it wants to extend mineralization at its North Pit target, near the north end of the project; the South Pit target, at the south end; and at Joss. It also plans to submit a permit for its Allen target, which it hopes to drill in 2019. Mineralization at Beartrack is open at depth and southwest along strike.

The company also plans to spend $1 million this year exploring Arnett Creek. It is permitting 52 drill pad locations, and expects to drill an initial 2,000 metres this year at an average depth of 100 to 150 metres per hole.

Last year it sampled 107 rocks across Arnett Creek. Thirty-seven graded higher than 1 gram per tonne gold.

“I don’t want to suggest that we’ve got a gram per tonne everywhere,” Agro says. “But it’s indicative of the potential of Revival Gold’s drill targets at Arnett Creek.”

The company is targeting a 3 million oz. gold resource in Idaho.

Revival’s projects sit 160 km northeast of Midas Gold’s (TSX: MAX; US-OTC: MDRPF) Stibnite gold project and 240 km northwest of Otis Gold’s (TSXV: OOO; US-OTC: OGLDF) Kilgore gold project. It’s a one-hour drive from Salmon, Idaho, a mining and ranching town home to 3,100 people that Agro says would like to see the project move forward.

Shares of Revival are trading at 78¢ within a 52-week range of 31¢ to 99¢. The company has a $29-million market capitalization.