The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
With a consolidated name and share structure, CBR Gold plans to spend C$5 million to advance its Three Bluffs and Niblack projects
Committee Bay Resources Ltd. completed a 5-to-1 share consolidation in February. The restructured company also changed its name to CBR Gold Corp. As a result of the name change, the company began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the new stock symbol CBG March 2.
The newly consolidated company is currently planning to spend about C$5 million in 2009 on its two advanced exploration projects in North America; the Niblack gold-copper rich volcanogenic massive sulfide prospect on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska, and the Three Bluffs gold deposit along the 300-kilometer, or 186-mile-long Committee Bay greenstone belt in northern Nunavut.
CBR Gold President and CEO John Williamson told Mining News the company is still working out the details of its 2009 plans at Niblack and Three Bluffs.
"We have worked up all the budgets for all the different scenarios; it is just a matter of sitting down and figuring out, in this market and investment climate: Firstly, what project? And secondly, what scope of work on each of the projects to give us the best bang for our buck in this marketplace?" Williamson explained.
Westward expansion
The primary target of the drilling at Three Bluffs this year will be to explore the area between the area of the current resource and high-grade gold discovered in a step-out hole drilled 500 meters to the west.
CBR Gold spokesman Derek Iwanaka told Mining News that "the most significant highlight of the 2008 exploration season was the high-grade discovery hole of 23.53 g/t gold over 13.59 meters, 500 meters west of the currently identified resource. This new discovery significantly increases the strike length potential of Three Bluffs and is the most important development at the project in the last three years."
According to Iwanaka, this extension in the mineralization warrants an additional 20,000 meters of infill drilling between the current resource and the new discovery.
"If drilling proves that continuity exists, we could potentially quickly add significant tonnage and increase the overall grade of the deposit," he said.
Williamson said CBR Gold is looking at spending about C$2 million on the Three Bluffs project in 2009. The junior plans to complete about 2,000 meters of drilling in the expansion area to the west of the current resource area and conduct engineering studies, advanced metallurgical studies and permitting at Three Bluffs.
One of the next steps at the Nunavut project, according to the CBR President, is to begin a bulk sampling program. Williamson said the company is currently meeting with government agencies to secure permitting for a bulk sample program.
Understanding the metallurgy
In recently completed metallurgical work, the junior studied gold recovery potential at Three Bluffs using gravity concentration, cyanide leaching and froth flotation.
Results of the studies indicate that a combination of gravity and flotation extraction would recover about 95 percent of the gold in concentrate. The tests show cyanide leaching would recover about 98 percent of the gold out of the gravity-froth concentrates, resulting in an overall recovery rate of 93 percent of gold from the property.
CBR Gold also has investigated the potential for gravity-only gold recovery at Three Bluffs and said this method has the potential to reduce operating costs. It is also likely that gravity would be used as the recovery method for a bulk test plant at the project.
Gravity gold recovery from a Knelson multi-pass test was 77.9 percent in 7.0 percent concentrate mass with 69.4 percent of the gold recovered in the initial pass containing 1.4 percent of the mass.
"These results reinforce our vision for a low-tonnage, high-grade open pit mine at Three Bluffs," said Williamson. "We are especially encouraged by the indications of high gold recovery with only a gravity circuit and anticipate that the scoping study will further support our view of economically viable production."
Scoping out Three Bluffs
CBR Gold said it has retained Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle Associates Inc. to complete a scoping study and supporting NI 43-101 technical report on the Three Bluffs deposit.
After an initial review of the metallurgy and the 2009 resource estimate for Three Bluffs, the consultant recommended examining two open-pit development options in the scoping study.
The first option is a 1,200-metric-ton-per-day mine-mill option with flotation and carbon-in-leach plant. The second possibility is an initial 500-tpd gravity and intense cyanide leach plant that would be expanded to a 1,200-tpd plant with flotation and CIL during year three. The second option would reduce initial startup costs at the remote deposit.
CBR Gold anticipates receiving results from the scoping study early in the second quarter of 2009.
The deposit's resource estimate, released March 2, outlined an indicated gold resource of 2.7 million metric tons grading 5.85 grams per metric ton, or 508,000 ounces, gold. The junior also estimated an inferred resource for Three Bluffs of 1.27 million metric tons grading 5.98 g/t, or 244,000 ounces of gold.
The 2009 revised Three Bluffs resource estimate is based on 15,673 meters of drilling in 89 holes, and includes 903 meters drilled in five holes during 2008. The company also drilled step-out holes, one of which discovered the high-grade mineralization to the west.
Underground drilling planned at Niblack
CBR Gold is also working on its exploration plans for the Niblack volcanic massive sulfide property that it acquired through a merger with Niblack Mining completed in October.
The CBR Gold President said the company is considering a C$3 million budget to advance Niblack in 2009. The current plan includes about 7,500 meters of underground drilling from the 1,000-meter tunnel within Lookout Mountain that was completed in 2008, and will target expanding the Lookout Zone at depth.
CBR Gold released an updated NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate for the polymetallic project on March 26. The new resources updates a September 2008 resource completed by Niblack Mining and includes 19 underground drill holes completed in 2008 within the Lookout mineralized zones.
CBR Gold reported an indicated resource at Niblack of 2,272,000 metric tons grading 2.42 grams per metric ton gold, 34.66 g/t silver, 1.27 percent copper and 2.36 percent zinc and an inferred resource of 1,502,000 metric tons grading 2.22 g/t gold, 34.62 g/t silver, 1.68 percent copper, and 3.43 percent zinc.
The junior is currently carrying out metallurgical and scoping studies for Niblack which it intends to use to plan and design the 2009 program at the project. The results of the metallurgical studies are expected by the end of April.
"Since acquiring the Niblack Project, the CBG team has continued to systematically compile and evaluate the project with the expressed purpose of expanding the mineral resources in order to fast-track to a production scenario," said Williamson.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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