NORTH AMERICAN GOLD REPORTS
Detour Lake & The Monster of Timmins Ontario
By Sean Mason | 6/1/2011
Gold juniors hope to ride the coattail of Detour Lake success story more than a decade after Placer Dome closed the fabled mine.
Detour Gold Corp. (TSX: T.DGC, Stock Forum) appears set to create a “monster” gold mine north of Timmins, Ontario. The company announced recently that drilling had increased its gold reserves to 14.9 million ounces at its Detour Lake project in the northeastern part of the province. This number could surge to 25.6 million ounce if inferred resources and other area of mineralization can be converted to reserves.
Placer Dome mined the Detour Lake deposit as an open pit between 1983 and 1999, producing 1.8 million ounces, but had to shut down operations when gold fell below the US$600-$650 per ounce range used in the feasibility study.
Detour Gold acquired the property from Pelangio Mines in January 2007, and in just over three years, the company produced a positive feasibility study for a 649,000-ounce-per-year mine. Since this is low-grade deposit, though, it is highly dependent on the gold price. Detour Gold has spent $100 million developing its Detour Lake project since last November and will spend another $400 million by the end of 2011.
If Detour Gold hopes to bump its gold reserves to 25 million plus ounces, however, it will need to focus on area exploration. In that regard, the company plans to spend about $14 million on drilling this year.
Its most promising target to date is likely the Block A property held in a 50-50 joint venture with Trade Winds Ventures Inc. (TSX: V.TWD, Stock Forum), an area in which Detour Gold had budgeted $3 million for 2011 alone.
The Block A property lies immediately west of the proposed pit along the same Sunday Lake volcanic-sediment contact that hosts Detour Lake. A recent resource calculation for Block A outlined an open pit amenable, indicated resource of 1.9 million ounces gold and an inferred resource of 762,000 ounces, based on a gold price of US$1,000 per ounce and using a 0.4 gram cut off.
“What they (Detour Gold) are showing in their current drilling is that mineralization (from their main deposit) extends directly to the west and most likely comes across onto Block A on the southern portion of it,” Trade Winds Ventures CEO and President Ian Lambert told Stockhouse.
Just another confirmation of huge gold deposits in our area.
I just found Detour Lake - 5 min later - It is quite a ways North of Timmins Ontario not Timmons Lake.
AI
