Laurentian Goldfields Ltd has announced that diamond drilling has commenced at the Company's 100% owned Goldpines South property, located on Ontario Highway 105, approximately 35 kilometres (km) southeast of Red Lake, Ontario.
The 34,846 hectare Property is subject to the Superior Alliance with AngloGold Ashanti Ltd. whereby AngloGold can earn a 60% interest by incurring $5.4 million in exploration expenditures over three years. AngloGold has incurred approximately $3.2 million in exploration expenditures under the Superior Alliance to date.
Laurentian recently completed Phase 4 surface exploration work at Goldpines South which included both infill and grid extension geochemical surface sampling and geological mapping. Upon review of these results, AngloGold has agreed to fund an initial 1,000 metre diamond drill program on select targets within the extensive SLF zone anomaly. Selected targets are characterized by anomalous gold concentrations in soil, and are coincident with magnetic anomalies identified from Laurentian's aeromagnetic survey flown in 2010. Drilling is scheduled to be completed in Q4, 2011 and will be managed by Laurentian.
"We are excited to conduct the first drilling program on the Goldpines South property," states Darin Labrenz, President and CEO of Laurentian. "Surface work has identified multiple discreet geochemical and aeromagnetic anomalies associated with the Sydney Lake fault zone, a crustal-scale structure that bisects the property. The correlation of anomalous geochemistry with this regional feature provides a compelling gold target for this initial drill program."
The SLF Anomaly
The 8 km SLF zone anomaly is located on the west side of the Property and runs parallel and adjacent to the Sidney Lake Fault, a first-order, deep crustal fault zone. The anomaly, underlain by schistose meta-sedimentary rocks of the English River Subprovince, was initially defined by Laurentian's geological crew in 2010 through combined Mobile Metal Ion ("MMI") soil sampling and conventional lake sediment sampling at 500 m centers. Specific targets within the SLF zone anomaly were defined and upgraded through subsequent surface exploration programs.