City Gold project looking brighter
TerraX sees hope in recent gold sector activity
Walter Strong
Northern News Services
Published Wednesday, February 4, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
TerraX Minerals Inc. president Joe Campbell seemed to breathe a sigh of relief to have something positive to say about capital markets after almost two years of slogging through difficult times.
His relief came from this year's golden start. The price of gold has been mostly on the rise since the turn of the new year. It briefly broke $1,300 an ounce on Jan. 22, and on Monday this week closed at $1,273.70 per ounce.
Jan. 22 was the first time gold broke $1,300 an ounce since last August.
With the rise in gold has come some large financing arrangements. In the past two weeks alone, Canadian-based mining companies have raised more than $1 billion, fanning the flames of hope among some junior explorers that 2015 may be a turn around for the sector after a couple of difficult years.
"Seeing that activity and the ability to pull that kind of money is very encouraging," said TerraX Minerals Inc. President Joe Campbell.
"It's a signal that it's time to get back into the sector. I've had people begin to contact me to say they are again looking at the junior mining sector as a place to invest."
"I haven't had those kinds of contacts for over a year. It's encouraging to hear that."
Campbell was in Yellowknife for presentations to city council, as well as at the Yellowknife Ski Club and in Ndilo to bring the public up to speed on work done in 2014, as well as plans for 2015.
This year's plans include a winter drilling program already underway on the property thanks to more than $2 million in financing raised last October.
Campbell said drilling results this year are "incredibly important" to the company. TerraX hopes to produce its first mineral resource statement for the property before the end of 2015. Good results are critical because the company has many more drill-ready targets - four times more - than it has financing to drill.
Last year, the company spent more than $2.3 million the project, with more than $1.5 million of it going to NWT-based businesses.
Campbell said he was disappointed that despite his efforts TerraX was only able to spend $109,731 on aboriginal-based businesses.
The largest single expenditure was for drilling services - at over $600,000 last year - which went toward a Yellowknife-based non-aboriginal business. There are no aboriginal-owned diamond drilling outfits in Yellowknife, Campbell said.
The Yellowknife City Gold project is 93.5 square kilometres of property acquired in February 2013 that includes the Yellowknife Greenstone belt that hosted the former Con and Giant Mines that begins just north of Yellowknife and runs northward for about 15 km.
For 2015, TerraX will drill approximately 5,000 metres of core in a 15 square-kilometre central portion of the property that includes the Barney Shear and Crestaurum deposit, as well as other high grade showings.
"The grade we've discovered (at Yellowknife City Gold) is equivalent to any gold mine in Canada," Campbell said.
Drilling on the property got underway on Jan. 22.
