Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES
With an $8.5 million dollar 2012 exploration program budget for its 100 per cent owned Courageous Lake gold project, Seabridge Gold Inc. is among the companies with active summer exploration programs in place for the Northwest Territories this year.

An aerial view of Fortune Minerals' NICO mine site, located 50 km north of Whati. While the focus of the NICO project this year is on completing the environmental assessment, exploration is planned for several other projects in the NWT this summer. - photo courtesy of Fortune Minerals Ltd.

As part of Seabridge's summer program, which is scheduled to begin in June, core drilling will be taking place along the 52 km Matthews Lake Greenstone Belt, with aims to find a second major gold deposit.

"Our main focus now switches to looking for the next deposit along this Greenstone Belt which once hosted two high-grade underground gold mines and has gold occurrences all along its length," stated Rudi Fronk, president and CEO when the 2012 program was announced.

Amid strong gold prices, Fortune Mineral Ltd. will be announcing new reserves that show an increase in gold at its NICO gold-cobalt-bismuth-copper deposit near Whati, president Robin Goad told News/North, although no exploration is scheduled for the site this year.

"We've got a 20-year reserve, and we're ready to go into commercial operation," Goad said, although the company's 2014 target date is subject to financing, receipt of permits, and infrastructure developments.

While Tamerlane Ventures Inc. continues to advance development of its Pine Point zinc-lead project near Hay River, diamond drilling is being planned for the property later this year, according to Brent Jones, director of corporate communications and investor relations, who added the mining company is also planning on doing core sampling and other preliminary exploration activities on the Indian Mountain Lake property, located at the East Arm of Great Slave Lake, acquired earlier this year from Panarc Resources Ltd..

Platinum Group Metals Ltd., which acquired 100 per cent ownership of the Providence Lake Nickel-Copper-Cobalt-Platinum group property, from Arctic Star Exploration Corp. earlier this year, has already started work on the property this year, and has drilling plans for after break up in June-July.

The property is located about 70 km west of the Diavik Diamond Mine.

Copper North Mining Corp., which took ownership of its Redstone Property, approximately 120 km northeast of Cantung Mine last October, recently announced plans to spend about $800,000 on its exploration program in the Deh Cho and Sahtu this summer.

While several more companies intend to spend on exploration in the NWT, ramping up exploration activity this summer season, it is not yet clear whether preliminary 2012 intended expenditure figures released by Natural Resources Canada will be reached this year, said Tom Hoefer, executive director of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines, due to uncertainty in the markets.

Exploration spending intentions for the territory are $124 million for 2012, according to the department's preliminary figures, up from an estimated $105.4 million last year.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.