Artemis Gold’s Blackwater mine at final commissioning stage
Artemis now expects to feed first ore to the ball mill in the next few weeks and continues to target first gold pour before year end.
July 5, 2010 — AUSTRALIA (Source: Proactive Investors) — ALKANE RESOURCES (ASX: ALK) has inked a maiden resource estimate of 2.96 million ounces of gold for the McPhillamys gold discovery, located within the Orange District Exploration Joint Venture with Newmont.
An independent resource assessment by Richard Lewis of Lewis Mineral Resource Consulting Pty Ltd in Sydney. defined an initial Indicated and Inferred Resource at a 0.3g/t gold cut-off of 91.94 million tonnes grading 1.00g/t Au and 0.07% Cu for a cumulative total of 2.96 million ounces of gold and 60,000 tonnes of copper.
Alkane is in a joint venture with Newmont Australia Limited, a subsidiary of the US based Newmont Mining Corporation (NYSE: NEM) over the Orange District Exploration Joint Venture, 400km northwest of Sydney, which includes Alkane’s Molong and Moorilda tenements located near the city of Orange in the Central West of New South Wales, adjacent to Newcrest Mining Ltd’s Cadia Valley Operations.
The bulk of the Resource is located within an Inner Ore Zone with dimensions of 600 metres by 200 metres.
Further drilling is likely to significantly expand the resource.
Potential development models include open pit and block caving underground mining concepts.
Currently the JV is drilling four deep core holes to specifically test the potential for the block caving concept.
Regional exploration has defined several targets with McPhillamys type stratigraphy and mineralisation over a strike length of at least 6 kilometres. Aircore test drilling is in progress.
Newmont Australia Limited earned a 51% interest in the JV in August 2009. In March 2010 NAL elected to proceed to 75% by completing a Bankable Feasibility Study on the McPhillamys Project.
Alkane is cashed up with $8.7 million with no debt.
