Gold Playground

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ValGold Adds Value for Investors in Fish Creek Venture

By Craig Thompson

Graham Davis of the Colorado School of Mines recently noted that Peter Tufano of Harvard University measured the sensitivity of gold company value to changes in gold price and discovered that a 1% change in gold price typically caused a 2% change in mining company value. If this is the case, the last year has certainly created billions in value around the globe as gold jumped 47% from $600 to about $880 in just 12 months. From majors like Barrick Gold (TSX:ABX) to juniors like ValGold Resources (TSX.V:VAL), 2007 was a year of phenomenal growth in the potential for profit in the gold industry.

Yet something else we have been witness to is that the share price of most gold companies, while some growth has occurred, has lagged behind this skyrocketing price of gold and the attendant increase in company valuation. To my mind this has created great openings for potential reward in the junior resource market in the sense that while the reward for discovery will be greater than ever, share prices are at present little changed by this reality. So, many companies are at present undervalued.

ValGold recently released a NI 43-101 report that I think illustrates this point clearly. The company is a real go-getter in the sense of acquiring a project, quickly identifying targets, drilling the hell out of it and then – when the time comes – taking it to the next phase or optioning it and moving to the next thing. All this in search of a “company maker”, as the expression goes.

It’s possible that ValGold may have hooked onto something big this time around, however, not only at its Los Patos concessions in Venezuela and Tower Mountain in Thunder Bay, Ontario, but also at its new Fish Creek property in Guyana, which is the subject of the 43-101 technical report.

In late November, the company announced high-grade assays from the Tower Mountain Gold Property, located in the Matawin Gold Belt, 40 km southwest of Thunder Bay, in Ontario. Intersections of high-grade gold occurred in TM-07-56, where 1.5m graded 58.20 g/Tonne Au (1.697 oz/t gold) and in TM-07-58 where 1.5m averaged 18.70 g/Tonne Au (0.545 oz/t gold).

In Venezuela, a growing pool of data including assay results from a 2007 drill program at the Los Patos occurrence is leading toward a NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate, which is expected within a few months. ValGold’s concessions also contain a number of gold occurrences that are considered highly prospective.

The newly available data from the Fish Creek project in Guyana should add new fuel to the fire.

Historic exploration for alluvial gold and diamonds in central and northern Guyana dates back to about 1887, with alluvial gold workings in the larger area surrounding the Fish Creek project dating from about 1900 onwards.

The only systematic modern exploration at Fish Creek took place between 1994 and 1997 when Golden Star Resources (TSX.V:GXX.H) completed four distinct phases of exploration, including geological mapping, stream sediment sampling, soil sampling, trenching, deep auger sampling, ground magnetometer survey and diamond drilling.

ValGold now owns all of this invaluable data.

What is most interesting about the mineralization uncovered by Golden Star is that it is very widely disseminated throughout all tested areas, both where previous workings were identified and in areas where no historical artisan mining occurred.

For example, drill holes FI-96/9 and FI-96/10 were drilled to test an auger sample that assayed 20.7 g/t Au located over the fault-thrust contact in an area of high geochemical gold response. This was a historic mining site with gold workings and visible gold in tailings and pits. Hole 10 intersected 2 metres of 33.98 g/t Au in altered andesitic rock containing vuggy quartz carbonate veins with up to 10% sulphides.

This was at the high end of the mineralization found on the property, but only in terms of grade. Throughout the property, over an unusually broad area, gold in soils were found to occur in the 50 to 100 ppb (0.05 to 0.1 g/t) Au range and within those areas more concentrated gold values of greater than 100 ppb (0.1 g/t). These appear to exist within a major fault structure over at least six kilometres.

Throughout the Fish Creek property, the independent author of the NI 43-101 report determined that “sporadic and discontinuous gold mineralization is present at relatively shallow levels in metamorphosed volcanics, sediments and intrusive rocks of the central and northern parts of the licence area.”

What he found mysterious, however, was that although these were large swathes of soils with exceptional gold enrichment, including 6 km x 2 km in the south and 3 km x 2 km in the north, none of the drilling carried out by Golden Star offered an explanation – a source – for the mineralization. This tells us two things – that much work remains to be done to determine solid drilling targets, and that there are possibly much greater grades at depth that would explain the very broadly disseminated gold in soils.

At the time of writing, ValGold’s VP of Exploration, Tom Pollock, had begun to assemble an exploration team for the Fish Creek project in Guyana, including a country manager and two field geologist positions. Together the new team will expend as much as $860,000 (as per the NI 43-101 recommendations) in the next 12 to 16 months to complete a review of historical work, follow up trenching and some drilling, with the ultimate goal of finding the deeper source of sub-surface gold mineralization indicated by previous drilling.

This project adds substantially to ongoing work elsewhere, in Venezuela (which, if you haven’t read about and you’re an investor, you should: http://www.resourcexinvestor.com/news.php?id=3175) and Canada. Fish Creek represents further diversification and value for a junior that has inexplicably come down in price since the summer doldrums, in spite of the runaway price of gold.

This article is intended for information purposes only, and is not a recommendation to buy or sell the equities of any company mentioned herein. It is based on sources believed to be reliable, but no warranty as to accuracy is expressed or implied. The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author except where statements are attributed to individuals other than the author, in which case the opinions are those of the individual to whom they are attributed.