The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2023 - January 18, 2024
Ascot sees the light at the end of the gold production tunnel at its Premier gold mine in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
Construction of the tailings storage facility at Premier.
With all the pieces in place, Ascot Resources Ltd. made the final push toward its transformation from mineral exploration and development company to a Premier gold producer in Northern British Columbia.
Lying about 15 kilometers (nine miles) north of Stewart, BC, Ascot's Premier gold project is home to a past-producing gold mine that last operated in the 1990s.
With much of the major infrastructure from this historical operation in place – mill, crushing and grinding circuits, tailings storage area, and hydroelectric grid power access – Ascot had the framework from which to build a new era gold mine at Premier.
A feasibility study completed in 2020 detailed plans to develop four underground mines – Big Missouri, Premier, Silver Coin, and Red Mountain – that will feed ore to the upgraded mill at Premier. At 2,500 metric tons per day, this operation is expected to produce roughly 1.1 million ounces of gold and 3 million oz of silver over the first eight years of mining.
This new era of Premier mining is based on 3.63 million metric tons of probable reserves averaging 5.45 grams per metric ton (637,000 oz) gold and 19.1 g/t (2.23 million oz) silver within the Silver Coin, Big Missouri, and Premier deposits; plus 2.55 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 6.52 g/t (534,000 oz) gold and 20.6 g/t (1.69 million oz) silver at Red Mountain, which is on a separate property about 20 kilometers (12 miles) the southeast.
At the onset of 2023, Ascot closed a C$200 million (US$147 million) financing package that allows it to finalize the work needed to put the operation detailed in the feasibility study into motion.
Going into the second half of the year, Ascot entered into a lease agreement with Caterpillar for the surface mining and construction equipment needed at Premier. The underground mining is being carried out by Procon Mining & Tunnelling Ltd.
Prior to contracting Procon, Ascot had completed about 907 meters of underground development at Big Missouri, which is slated to deliver the first ore to the Premier mill.
In addition to continuing underground development at Big Missouri, the contract mining company is also driving a new ramp down into Prew zone of the Premier deposit.
"The Prew Zone was initially delineated in 2017 and is where we plan to start production mining at the Premier deposit in early 2024," said Ascot Resources President and CEO Derek White.
As crews prepared for mining, Ascot carried out a roughly 12,000-meter drill program focused on defining and expanding resources in and around deposits slated for early mining at Premier.
This began with drilling at Prew, which lies about 500 meters southeast of the mill.
Highlights from drilling at Prew include:
• 6.5 meters averaging 23.37 g/t gold and 54.3 g/t silver in hole P23-2465.
• 4.9 meters averaging 32.85 g/t gold and 216.2 g/t silver in P23-2468.
• 6.87 meters averaging 18.93 g/t gold in hole P23-2475.
Overall, the drilling shows the location and geometry of the mineralization at Prew is well defined, providing a good starting point for mining operations.
Following Prew, the surface drill rigs focused on the Big Missouri deposit about six kilometers (3.7 miles) north of the mill.
In November, Ascot reported the highest-grade intercept ever at Big Missouri – 0.9 meters averaging 691.5 g/t gold.
Highlights from the 2023 drilling at Big Missouri include:
• 9.72 meters averaging 22.3 g/t gold in hole P23-2484.
• 6.48 meters averaging 98.84 g/t gold in hole P23-2490.
• 5.65 meters averaging 17.72 g/t gold in hole P23-2494.
"With underground mine development at Big Missouri having started last year, this is an opportune time to have intercepted some of the highest-grade gold mineralization in Ascot's history," said White.
In addition to drilling, the 2023 exploration included ground-based induced polarization geophysical surveys over an 800-meter northern extension target at Day, a zone at Big Missouri; a 1,000-meter western expansion target at Sebakwe, a high-grade discovery zone immediately north of the Premier deposit; and Dilworth, an earlier staged deposit in the northern part of the Premier property.
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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