The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - March 22, 2024
Felix Gold has amassed a large package of gold-enriched properties in the Fairbanks Mining District.
Felix Gold Ltd. March 15 announced that it is taking a fresh look at a potential pathway to establishing a mine at the historical Grant gold mine a few miles northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska.
A high-grade deposit was discovered at Grant in 1926 and small-scale mining was carried out there until 1942. Interest in the high-grade gold deposit was renewed in the 1970s and mining was resumed there during the 1980s.
An estimated 18,300 ounces of gold from ore with an average grade of about 5.3 grams per metric ton gold was historically produced from mostly underground mining at Grant Mine.
With the gold at Grant Mine being free milling, a simple gravity and cyanide vat leach circuit achieved up to 98% gold recoveries during 1980s operations.
According to a calculation completed for Felix in 2021, Grant hosts 5.8 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee-compliant inferred resource averaging 1.95 g/t (364,000 oz) gold. Roughly 136,000 oz of this gold is contained within underground resources averaging 6.2 g/t gold.
Felix says its current focus at Grant is on drilling to grow the resource.
When the 2021 resource was calculated, an exploration target was identified at Grant Mine with the potential for approximately another 500,000 oz of gold in around 6 million metric tons of resources averaging around 2 g/t gold.
Despite its renewed interest in Grant Mine, Felix's primary focus remains on the near-surface, oxidized gold mineralization identified at the NW Array target on the Australian company's Treasure Creek project about 12 miles west of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine.
Drilling completed over the previous two years has outlined a 2,000- by 600-meter zone of gold mineralization at NW Array. Most of the drilling so far has been only to a depth of 60 meters with some holes drilled to around 100 meters.
Based on Felix's inaugural drilling at Treasure Creek in 2022, a 1.1-million- to 3.6-million-ounce gold near-surface exploration target in 76 million to 92 million metric tons of material averaging 0.4 to 1.1 g/t gold was established for NW Array.
Highlights from 50 shallow holes drilled last year include:
• 100.5 meters averaging 1.14 g/t gold from a depth of 21.3 meters in hole 23TCRC135.
• 70.1 meters averaging 1.6 g/t gold from a depth of 6.1 meters in hole 23TCRC138.
• 53.3 meters averaging 1.88 g/t gold from a depth of 30.5 meters in hole 23TCRC153.
• 54.9 meters averaging 1.8 g/t gold from a depth of 1.5 meters in hole 23TCRC155.
Felix is currently carrying out metallurgical tests on NW Array material in preparation for an inaugural resource estimate for the road-accessible gold project about 10 miles (16 miles) north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
Felix also recognized significant quantities of the antimony mineral stibnite alongside the near-surface gold at NW Array and had the holes from its 2023 drilling analyzed for this critical mineral. Highlights include:
• 1.5 meters averaging 26% antimony from a depth of 22.9 meters, and 16.76 meters averaging 1.91% antimony from a depth of 51.8 meters in hole 23TCRC135.
• 6.1 meters averaging 13% antimony from a depth of 30.5 meters in hole 23TCRC155.
• 6.1 meters averaging 7.69% antimony from a depth of 3.1 meters in hole 23TCRC176, including 1.5 meters averaging 28% antimony.
The historic Scrafford Mine, an operation that produced an estimated 1.08 million kilograms (2.4 million pounds) of antimony from about 2,800 metric tons of ore averaging 38.6% stibnite, lies about 2,000 meters southeast of NW Array.
"The critical nature of antimony as a strategic metal for the U.S. provides a unique opportunity to assess the potential for a near term, at surface extraction of antimony for domestic supply requirements," Felix Gold wrote in its financial report. "This work is ongoing."
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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