Strathmore diversifies with copper and gold

Strathmore Minerals (STM –T) has gained a bit of diversification.

The company with a primary focus on developing uranium projects in the U.S. now has a copper and gold deposit and a Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA) to go along with it.

Vancouver-based Strathmore announced both the first compliant resource calculation for its recently acquired Copper King gold and copper project in southern Wyoming along with the PEA.

The assessment, done by Mine Development Associates, considered a mine that would cost US$104.06 million to build and then calculated a pre-tax net present value (NPV) of US$159.5 million using a 5% discount rate. It estimated that the internal rate of return (IRR) for the project would be 31.2%.

The key metrics used in the calculations were a US $1,100 per oz. gold price and a copper price of US$3.00 per lb.

The study considered an open-pit mine life of 18 years, with a mill that would process 9,071 tonnes per day using a flotation plant that would produce a gold-copper concentrate.

Over the life of the mine, the average annual production is estimated to be 38,655 oz. gold and 10.47 million lbs. copper.

Roughly 85% of the total resource has made it into the measured or indicated, and the company was able to achieve that because of the consistent nature of the mineralization and the current drill spacing.

Measured and Indicated Resources came in at 54.2 million tonnes grading 0.53 grams gold for 926,00 oz. gold and 0.187% copper for 223 million lbs. copper.

Inferred resources were estimated to be 14.17 million tonnes grading 0.38 grams gold for 174,000 oz. gold and 0.2% copper for 62.53 million lbs. copper.

Strathmore says that the copper and gold mineralization at the project is associated with disseminated and minor fracture and vein-filling sulfide mineralization within a Proterozoic-age granodiorite intrusive body cut by numerous quartz monzonite and lamprophyre dikes.

The company only took hold of the Copper King project earlier this spring via its acquisition of Saratoga Gold. The deal for Saratoga was all stock, with Strathmore issuing 18.26 million of its shares to Saratoga shareholders.

In Toronto on Sept. 13 the company’s shares were up 9% or 2.5¢ to 30¢ on 209,000 shares traded.