Feb 20 2019
Liberty Gold Corp. focused on exploring the Great Basin of the United States, has announced that a Plan of Operations at the Black Pine Project has been successfully approved.
The Black Pine Project is one of Liberty Gold’s three main gold projects situated in the U.S.’ prolific Great Basin. It is approximately located in southern Idaho and is a run-of-mine, past-producing, oxide-heap leach gold mine containing a huge, shallow, district-scale gold system hosting Carlin-style sedimentary rocks.
Through this Plan of Operations, Liberty Gold will be able to have complete access to the 7.3 km2 core of a projected 12 km2 gold system. As part of the permit, a total of around 141 acres, or 0.57 km2, can be disturbed, including 370 drill pads and around 49 km of new roads, subject to a phased yearly reclamation plan. However, within the historic Black Pine Mine, the main gold zone is not subject to seasonal closures and can be freely accessed throughout the year, provided there are favorable road and weather conditions. A Plan of Operations, previously granted, enables Liberty Gold to have access to an extra 71 drill sites.
We are thrilled to have this permit in hand. This is the largest permit we have obtained in terms of size and scope, and we are excited about the prospect of a comprehensive drill test of the Black Pine gold system starting in Q2 2019. We were impressed with the timeliness and professionalism of the US Forest Service Sawtooth National Forest - Minidoka Ranger District throughout the process of producing the Environmental Assessment and adhering to all of the timelines and milestones necessary to permit this project. There are very few opportunities left in the Great Basin with multi-kilometer-scale oxide gold targets containing hundreds of gold-bearing drill holes, surrounded by undrilled gold-in-soil anomalies.
Moira Smith, Vice President, Exploration and Geoscience, Liberty Gold Corp.
Black Pine was acquired by Liberty Gold in 2016, and since then, the company has spent more than two years collecting data from 1,874 blast holes, shallow drill holes, and other data pursuant in order to put together a detailed 3D model of the residual gold mineralization at the property. In late 2017, Liberty Gold also performed a small, proof of concept drill program as part of an existing permit. The data compilation successfully detected an oxide gold system of 12 km2 in a receptive carbonate package with a thickness of around 300 m. To date, no sulfides have been detected in the system. The majority of the drill holes only extend 92 m from the surface, with a major proportion ending in gold mineralization.
In May 2017, a new Plan of Operations was submitted to the US Forest Service (“USFS”) by Liberty Gold, which worked persistently with Stantec Consulting Services, Inc. and the US Forest Service to complete a number of surveys, including archaeological and wildlife, to help generate a new Plan of Operations and detailed Environmental Assessment. The Plan of Operations and the associated Environmental Assessment were subject to stringent public and inter-agency review. A Finding of No Significant Impact was issued on December 12, 2018, and the approved Plan of Operations POO-2017-072046 was issued on February 12, 2019, by the USFS.
If snow and weather conditions are favorable, drilling is anticipated to begin in the second quarter of 2019 and will go on through early November. About 16,000–20,000 m of reverse circulation drilling in 80–100 holes has been scheduled.