Tower Hill hits more gold at Livengood

VANCOUVER — The Livengood property continues to return long, low-grade intercepts for International Tower Hill Mines (ITH-V, THM-X) in Alaska.

“Livengood is living good,” president and CEO Jeffrey Pontius says, despite Tower Hill’s share price sliding 11 to close at $1.37 on the news.

About two months ago, Tower Hill drilling cut as much as 200 metres grading 1.38 grams gold per tonne starting 11 metres below surface.

And now the company has another long one almost as good. In its latest batch of 21 infill and step-out results, Tower Hill announced hitting 162 metres grading 1.02 grams gold starting at 43 metres depth in hole 31.

The result came from the property’s Core zone, which has been the focus of 2008 drilling. Other highlights include 50 metres of 1.38 grams gold starting at 102 metres in hole 24 and 40 metres of 1.94 grams gold starting 245 metres down-hole in hole 34.

So far, Tower Hill has outlined a mineralized area 1 km long by 300-500 metres wide in the Core zone.

With 150 more holes drilled this year, bringing Tower Hill’s total to 200, Pontius says the company hopes to double the size of its resource estimate, which stands at 181 million inferred tonnes grading 0.54 gram gold, and bring up a portion of that to measured and indicated.

Pontius expects to release the updated resource at the end of October, at which point Tower Hill will assess whether to proceed with a planned preliminary economic assessment.

“The real goal is to put together a pretty solid picture of a deposit that so far looks a lot like the Fort Knox mine,” he says. Kinross Gold (K-T, KGC-N) owns and operates the 35,000-tonne-per-day Fort Knox gold mine, about 100 km south of Livengood.

The Livengood property, about 120 km northwest of Fairbanks, is one of five that Tower Hill owns or has options on in Alaska.

Outside Alaska, the company has options on two properties in Nevada: Painted Hills and North Bullfrog.

At North Bullfrog, Tower Hills recently completed a resource estimate for the Mayflower zone, one of the smaller mineralized areas located on the 17-sq.-km property.

It rang in at 2 million indicated tonnes grading 0.88 gram gold.

Pontius says the company’s focus at the moment is on defining about a 1-gram-per-tonne resource in the Core zone at Livengood for a potential starter pit.

“We’re trying to build it up as quickly as we can so that we can get the interest of majors,” he says.

With drilling ongoing, Pontius says Tower Hill will take a break in November and start the rigs up again in February to test boggy areas best drilled in winter.

As for next summer, he says the company is “fully cashed up and ready for another full-blown drill program.” At the moment, Tower Hill has about $12.5 million in the bank.