Jun 16 2020
Millrock Resources, a premier project generator to the mining industry, has offered an update on drilling operations ongoing at its 64North Gold project.
Resolution Minerals, in a collaborative arrangement with Millrock Resources as the project operator, is funding and managing the exploration work.
The 64North Gold Project is an extremely large tract of claims located in the emerging Goodpaster Gold District in Alaska. Drilling operations have been restarted at the Aurora Target, advancing the program that was initiated in March 2020. The above image shows the approximate locations of the holes.
At the Aurora Target, the target being drilled lies contiguous and immediately west of the Pogo Mine property. This property is owned and managed by Northern Star Resources Ltd, which has earlier reported a gold resource of 5.95 million ounces of gold in an array of veins grading 9.6 g for each ton of gold.
Over four million ounces of gold have already been extracted at the Pogo Mine property. Recently, Northern Star Resources has declared a new gold discovery, known as the Goodpaster deposit, located near the mutual claim border.
Millrock Resources also cautioned that mineralization on the neighboring property of Northern Star Resources is not essentially indicative of gold mineralization hosted on its property.
We are pleased to be drilling again to further test the Aurora Target, which lies immediately southwest of the Goodpaster gold deposit discovered by our neighbours, Northern Star Resources. We will continue the systematic exploration of the favorable geophysical and structural/stratigraphic targets that comprise the Aurora Target area.
Gregory Beischer, President and CEO, Millrock Resources Inc.
Beischer continued, “Also, the planned airborne ZTEM and magnetic survey will be a great test. If successful in replicating results obtained by ground-based methods, this airborne method will result in significant cost savings to test other areas of the project.”
The Aurora Target is a 2 km x 5 km-long zone of low-magnetic rocks located close to a late diorite intrusion. The setting is quite analogous to that seen at the neighboring Pogo Mine property.
According to Millrock Resources, the late diorite body could have intruded along a westerly extension of the Liese Creek fault. This Liese Creek fault is known to have contributed considerably to the origin of the Pogo gold deposits. Extremely anomalous gold-bismuth-arsenic in soil has been recorded.
Previous drilling has intersected high-angle gold-bearing quartz veins drilling, but the few holes drilled by prior workers did not penetrate sufficiently deep to intersect the regional, low-angle shear zone that is recognized to host gold at the Goodpaster Deposit and the Pogo Mine property. Millrock Resources assumes that this structure already exists at the Aurora Target.
Results of Drill Hole 20AU001
Various zones of quartz veins, fault zones, and mafic rocks intercepted in the 20AU001 drill hole align with the exploration model. The mafic lithological layers were preferentially ruptured by the regional, low-angle shear.
Situated in this low-angle, regional shear and the present drill hole program, the Aurora Target will test the shear for gold mineralization in many different sites. At the Aurora Target, the regional shear was identified by CSAMT and ELF ground-based geophysical surveys conducted earlier in 2019.
ZTEM Airborne Survey
Within the same region, a ZTEM airborne survey will soon be performed along with in-depth airborne magnetic surveys. If the airborne techniques successfully identify the regional shear, they might be applied elsewhere on the project in a highly economical way.
Millrock Resources has developed a detailed COVID-19 safety plan with clear procedures that will ensure the safety of the operating staff. The plan has been sent to the applicable agencies and sanctioned by the State of Alaska.
Resolution Minerals can earn a total of around 60% interest in the 64North Gold Project via payment of US$200,000 cash, exploration costs of US$20 million, and issuance of 38 million Resolution shares.
On the whole, US$5.0 million is the minimum commitment for 2020. Other details of the agreement between Resolution Minerals and Millrock Resources have been documented in the latter’s announcement made on December 16th, 2019.
Quality Control and Quality Assurance
Millrock Resources conforms to rigorous Quality Assurance–Quality Control (QA/QC) standards. Drill core samples have been stored in a safe place at all times.
Representative half-core samples for this program will be subjected to sample preparation at ALS Chemex prep laboratory based in Fairbanks, Alaska, United States. Samples will then be examined at ALS Chemex laboratories located in Vancouver, Canada. Fire Assay (particularly ALS code Au-AA25 - Au by fire assay and AAS using a 30-g nominal sample weight) will be used to analyze gold.
A total of 48 other elements will be examined using the ALS method code ME-MS61 in which a four-acid “near-total” digestion as well as an ICP-MS + ICP-AES finish is involved.
The subsequent QA/QC procedures have been implemented for this drilling program: (1) Duplicates will be produced as coarse crush duplicates on each 50th sample (2% insertion) in the sample preparation procedure performed at the laboratory; (2) Blank material will be incorporated at a speed of two blanks for every 100 samples (2% insertion); and (3) Standards—every 20th sample (5% insertion) of Certified Reference Material (CRM) plus extra random insertions will be performed as per the discretion of the supervising geologist.
All results obtained from standards, duplicates, and blanks will be assessed and subsequently published if found to be precise and within the satisfactory tolerances.