• URANIUM | Fission advance FEED at Patterson Lake South

Seabridge Gold is drilling at its 100%-owned Iskut property in the hopes of making new copper-gold porphyry discoveries in British Columbia’s Golden Horseshoe. Iskut is located only 20 km from the company’s massive KSM copper-gold project.

The initial work will be on the Snip North target and expand to the Bronson Slope target. Three helicopter-borne drills are on site, and two additional units will arrive in coming weeks. The program calls for 12 to 15 diamond drill holes totaling at least 12,000 metres.

The company says regional geophysical surveys and surface geology continue to confirm a district-scale structural feature that connects the Quartz Rise, Bronson Slope and Snip North targets. All the recognized mineral occurrences at Iskut are interpreted as high-level expressions of copper-gold porphyry systems aligned along this regional structural trend. The trend has similar characteristics to the one that hosts a cluster of porphyry systems Seabridge has defined at the KSM project.

The Iskut property covers 22,238 hectares straddling the Iskut River in the Pacific Coast range about 110 km east of Stewart, B.C. Seabridge acquired the property in 2016 when it made an all-share offer for SnipGold. CMJ

Fission Uranium has kicked off its summer drill program to advance the front-end engineering design (FEED) work at its wholly owned Patterson Lake South (PLS) uranium property in the Athabasca basin of Saskatchewan. A two-stage program with 12 holes is planned.

Two holes for a total of 440 metres will be drilled to confirm geotechnical parameters of the rock mass and discontinuities. The information will be used in planning the underground mine infrastructure.

Seven test holes and three monitoring holes for a total of 500 metres will be drilled for hydrogeological assessment of the potential to expand the tailings management facility (TMF) northward into the aggregate borrow pit. If the results support this goal, the TMF will be enlarged to treat the same volume as considered in the feasibility study over a larger area, which would reduce the ultimate berm height. Either option is expected to reduce long-term rehabilitation costs as well as provide operational flexibility and cost efficiency. CMJ

• GOLD BONANZA | New Found Gold drills 105 g/t over 27 metres, including 757 g/t

New Found Gold continues its successful drilling program at the Queensway gold project near Gander, Nfld. The latest bonanza grades come from the newly discovered Iceberg zone, one of 14 zones discovered on the property.

Hole NFGC-23-1210 returned 105.32 g/t gold along its 27.1 metre length beginning at 59.8 metres below surface. The length included intersections of 59.0 g/t over 0.85 metre, 22.82 g/t over 0.45 metre, 39.92 g/t over 3.15 metres, 38.92 g/t over 3.15 metres, 159.61 g/t over 1.05 metre, 234.69 g/t over 7.3 metres, and 756.96 g/t gold over 1.0 metre, ending at 81.4 metres below surface.

The Iceberg zone is currently drill-defined over a strike length of 550 metres and represents the eastern extend of the Keats-Baseline fault zone, the same that that hosts the Keats Main zone. At the time of writing, New Found was in the midst of a 500,000-metre drill program at the Queensway project, and approximately 55,135 metres of core is awaiting assay results. CMJ