Mar 4 2014
Gold Standard Ventures Corp. ("Gold Standard" or the "Company") announces that as a result of a review by the British Columbia Securities Commission ("BCSC"), the Company is issuing this news release to clarify certain technical disclosure relating to its mineral projects, including Railroad and Pinion amongst others, from information contained in its website, corporate presentations, public filings and investor materials.
- The corporate presentation "Discovery of the North Bullion Gold Deposit" dated January 2013 (the "Bullion Presentation") disclosed certain contained ounces of gold within the "POD", "Trout Creek" and "South Bullion" deposits which were not disclosed as historical estimates, exceeded the gross contained ounces of gold in the historical estimates and did not include the required cautionary disclosure required by National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101"). This presentation has been removed from the Company's website.
- The corporate presentation "Pending Pinon Acquisition" dated January 2014 (the "Pinon Presentation") re-classified certain historical resource estimates using current CIM classes including a substantial quantity of inferred class and did not include all of the cautionary language prescribed by NI 43-101 for historical estimates. This presentation has been removed from the Company's website.
- In an interview (#2) titled "Revealing Interview with Gold Standard Venture's Chief Geologist David C. Mathewson" issued by Rockstone Research Ltd. dated October 22, 2013 (the "Interview") the Interview treats certain historical estimates as current resources, reports on historical mineral resources without providing the cautionary language required by NI 43-101 and discloses non-compliant resource estimates on competitor projects. The Interview was neither posted on or linked to from the Company's website nor distributed by the Company. At present, there are insufficient data available to qualify these historical estimates as current resources.
- The Interview also reports on potential exploration targets without the required disclosure and cautionary language prescribed by NI 43-101. Specifically, the Interview refers to a quote from an October 2013 research paper by an investment dealer as to the resource potential of the Railroad project. The Interview also includes statements describing the North Bullion Deposit as "likely to turn out to be larger than Newmont's Rain Mine (+6 million gold ounces) in operation only a stone's throw away…" and the potential for the Pinon deposit "to be two times or more of the current size". The Company acknowledges that these statements are overly promotional, are unsupported and will not be repeated. Gold Standard fully retracts these speculative statements of future resources, as there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource and that it is uncertain if further exploration will result in the target being delineated as a mineral resource.
The Company retracts all disclosure in the above Presentations and Interview that stated or implied the existence of current resource estimates, and issues the following clarification regarding the historical resource estimates for all zones within its Railroad and Pinion projects.
At present, there are no current mineral resources on the Railroad or Pinion projects. A number of resource estimates were historically completed for the Railroad and Pinion projects over the years; however, such historic resource estimates were derived from data assembled prior to the introduction of NI 43-101 and, to the Company's knowledge, a "qualified person" has not completed sufficient work to classify the historical estimates as mineral resources or reserves under NI 43-101. In the opinion of the Company's Qualified Persons, certain aspects of the data that has been reviewed to date, including collar survey, metallurgical and geotechnical data, is of uncertain quality and reliability. Additionally, this historic data is not supported by sufficient QA/QC standards for resource estimation. Because of the data reliability issues, the Company is discontinuing disclosure of the historical resource and reserve estimates at the Pod, Trout Creek, and South Bullion mineral deposits. At this time, these zones formerly designated as historical estimates represent exploration targets that will require additional work before an initial mineral resource estimate can be determined.
The Company has engaged professionals from Apex Geosciences Ltd., as Independent Qualified Persons, who are in the process of preparing a new NI 43-101 Technical Report for its Railroad and Pinion projects. The Company expects to file the new report on SEDAR on or before March 31, 2014.
The scientific and technical content and interpretations contained in this news release have been reviewed, verified and approved by Steven R. Koehler, Gold Standard's Manager of Projects, BSc. Geology and CPG-10216, and Robert McLeod, P.Geo. an Independent Director of Gold Standard Ventures. Both are Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43-101.
Further to the Company's news release of February 21, 2014, closing of the Pinion acquisition and concurrent private placement is now scheduled for tomorrow, March 4, 2014.