April 9, 2018 / News Tonogold Resources Exercises Option with Comstock Lucerne Deposit (Virginia City, Nevada).
La Jolla, California, April 9th 2018. TONOGOLD RESOURCES INC. (OTC:TNGL) (“Tonogold”) is pleased to announce that it has entered into the second phase of its option agreement with Comstock Mining Inc. (“Comstock”) and last week paid the scheduled $2 million to Comstock, pursuant to the agreement dated October 3rd 2017 (the “Agreement”), which was announced to the market by Tonogold on October 5th 2017.
The Agreement provides Tonogold an exclusive right to earn a 51% controlling interest in 1,162 acres of mining claims in the highly prospective Comstock Lode region in Virginia City, Nevada, which includes the Lucerne gold-silver Deposit, located in Storey and Lyon Counties, Nevada. The decision by Tonogold, follows a detailed 6-month technical and economic assessment of the Lucerne deposit by Tonogold’s technical consultants, Mine Development Associates (“MDA”), of Reno, Nevada, which included the development of a new resource model.
At this time the resource and preliminary economic pit design work completed by MDA has provided Tonogold with confirmation that the resource at Lucerne is likely to support a technically and economically viable mining operation, although further data validation and verification will be required before MDA are able to provide Resource and Reserve estimates suitable for production planning and public reporting.
As foreshadowed in our October 5th 2017 announcement, the work over the past 6-months has confirmed that the Resource estimate for Lucerne is likely to be significantly lower than previously estimated by Comstock, mainly the result of (i) the cut-off grade of the previous estimate (at 0.007 ounces of gold per ton) being too low, (ii) high grade zones having overstated grade and tons within the overall resource grade and (iii) that a significant part of the official resource is at a depth below which economic extraction is contemplated.
Tonogold emphasizes again that it is the quality of the resource that is far more important than the quantity and is confident that the changes from the previous resource estimate should deliver an economically feasible, and ultimately profitable mine plan, with significantly enhanced performance when compared to the mining that occurred between 2012 and 2015. The new resource modeling work by MDA, through explicitly modeling each mineralized zone, ensures that the possibility for grade smearing is effectively eliminated.
The work program covering the next 12-month period will include MDA completing the validation work required to provide a Resource estimate, undertaking a Reserve estimate, and producing an economic assessment, all suitable for reporting under Canadian NI 43-101.
At this time, Tonogold is targeting future operations that would provide annual gold production (on a 100% basis) of between 75,000 to 100,000 ounces of gold per year, plus 600,000 ounces of silver with cash operating costs targeted to be under $800 per ounce.
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Tonogold’s CEO, Mark Ashley said “Although there is still much to complete prior to having a comprehensive and robust operating plan to justify a production decision, it has been pleasing to see our early operating concepts that have been developed over the past few years for the Lucerne deposit being validated by the detailed technical assessments undertaken to date. The relationship developed between Tonogold and Comstock has strengthened over this initial 6-month period and bodes well for a positive and constructive partnership in the successful pursuit of our mutual objectives”.
He added: “The support we have received from our shareholders and the investment community generally has been outstanding and we look forward to being able to continue to build accretive shareholder value driven by fundamentally based decisions using realistic assumptions and focused on the success of medium to longer-term growth objectives”.
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