Strongbow shoots up the market

Shares in Strongbow Exploration (SBW-V) continue to exceed 30 apiece more than three weeks after the company released drill results from its partly owned Skoonka Creek gold property in southwestern British Columbia.

In Toronto on Dec. 20, Strongbow shares closed at 33 — about 30% more than they fetched in late November.

Strongbow’s president and chief executive, Ken Armstrong, says the market’s bullishness is in line with drill results that were highlighted by a 12.8-metre intercept grading 18.4 grams gold per tonne.

“This is a very good gold result for a first-pass drill program on a property that hasn’t been drilled before,” Armstrong says.

In all, 11 holes were drilled at Skoonka. The company says gold mineralization at the property has been traced over a strike length of 350 metres, intersecting alteration quartz veining typical of low-sulphidation, epithermal gold systems.

First discovered by Almaden Minerals (AMM-T, AMMLF-O), Skoonka is a 101-sq.-km property that lies on what Strongbow describes as, “the emerging Spences Bridge gold belt.”

Only a 3-hour drive from Strongbow’s head office in downtown Vancouver, Armstrong says the property is exciting because British Columbia has had few new gold discoveries in recent years.

“It’s very well located,” Armstrong says, noting that Skoonka is just 10 km from the Trans-Canada Highway. The poor mineral exposure of the property may be one reason it wasn’t targeted by prospectors earlier, he adds.

Strongbow can claim 60% of Skoonka by paying Almaden $4 million and 1 million Strongbow shares within six years.

While Strongbow has prospective diamond, nickel and base metals properties throughout Canada, Armstrong says the October drilling results from Skoonka bump it up the priority chart.

Still, he has no plans to change the company’s philosophy of investing in properties that stretch across the commodity spectrum.

“We largely look at ourselves as an exploration company,” Armstrong says. “We’re not specific to one commodity or specific to one geographical area.”

But to finance such endeavours, Strongbow will have to find new capital — it has eight other properties ready for drilling in 2006.

Armstrong says some form of financing will be put in place by the end of this year or the beginning of 2006.

While a private placement is a possibility, Armstrong is wary of share dilution. Alternatively, he says Strongbow also has 4 million shares of Tournigan Gold (TVC-V) that could be sold. Shares in Tournigan closed at 77 apiece in Toronto on Dec. 20.

Armstrong, a geologist, was promoted to president and chief executive from vice-president of operations in January 2005. He first met Grenville Thomas — Strongbow’s chairman, and founder of what is now Aber Diamond (ABZ-T, ABER-Q) — in 1997, while working for Diavik Diamond Mines, a unit of Rio Tinto (RTP-N, RIO-L), at the Diavik mine in the Northwest Territories.