Wesdome Strikes New Gold In Val D’Or Camp

Wesdome Gold Mines (WDO-T, WDOFF-O) has found some much needed gold in an area that has never been drilled before on its Dubuisson property, in Val d’Or, Que. — good news to go along with a solid third quarter.

Wesdome was drilling from a barge on Lac de Montigny before the ice set in and is now planning land-based drilling to test the extension of the mineralized system.

Highlights include 8 metres grading 6.92 grams gold per tonne, 5.8 metres of 8.75 grams gold and 17 metres at 4.25 grams gold.

“It is nice to find something entirely brand new hiding under the lake in the middle of the Val d’Or mining camp,” Wesdome’s vice-president of exploration, George Mannard, said in a statement.

Mannard says the preliminary grades look similar to those at its Kiena mine, 3 km west. The company aimed to drill 50,000 metres this year to expand depleting resources at Wesdome’s two gold operations: Kiena and the Eagle River mine in Wawa, Ont.

Six 100-metre spaced, 2-hole sections were completed at Dubuisson and the structure appears open in all directions.

Wesdome was trying to get a handle on the size potential of the mineralized system. Gold has been traced for 500 metres in an east-southeast direction but the geometry, internal continuity and true width of the mineralization is still not clear.

The company says there are multiple zones of gold mineralization hosted by a complex mlange of diorite, feldspar porphyry and basalt encased in a broad ultramafic sequence, bound by deformed talc-chlorite schists. Mineralization includes quartz-albite-tourmaline-pyrite veinlet stock-works in strongly albitized diorite and/or feldspar porphyry.

On Nov. 12, the company reported it had earned $2.2 million in the third quarter from revenue of $22.2 million, up from earnings of $150,000 in the second quarter.

Wesdome mined a total of 23,700 oz. gold, evenly split between Kiena and Eagle River. The company expects to exceed its 80,000-oz. target for 2008.

Wesdome received an average gold price of C$902 an oz. during the third quarter and C$913 for the year so far, compared with C$712 and C$740 per oz., respectively, for the same periods in 2007. Operation and development costs for the quarter came to $645 per oz., compared with $694 per oz. for the first three quarters combined. Operation and development costs were $660 per oz. in last year’s third quarter and $715.04 for the first nine months of 2007.

Wesdome credited the volatile exchange rate between the U. S. and Canadian dollar for allowing it to sell gold above C$900 per oz. The Canadian dollar was trading at US81.12¢ at presstime, down 20¢ from this time last year.