Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. (TSX: SBB) is a Canadian precious metals company. The company's assets in Nunavut include the Back River Gold Project which has a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment completed on it.
Sabina Gold & Silver Corp. (TSX: SBB) - Unlocking Precious Metals Opportunities in the Canadian North
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North Of 60
Sabina Faces a Huge Challenge in Nunavut
~ By Ted Niles - September 7 2011
The Canadian Arctic contains the largest reserve of unexploited natural re- Umwelt assays reported September 1 include 14.62 grams per tonne gold
sources in the world. But they have remained unexploited for good reasons: over 13.9 metres (including 27.56 g/t over 5 metres), 7.32 g/t over 24.4
savage weather and nominal infrastructure. Even as talk of climbing tem- metres, 5.47 g/t over 29 metres and 7.28 g/t over 18.4 metres. August 25
peratures and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s commitment to the region results included 10.19 g/t over 33 metres (including 27.16 g/t over 9 me-
excite interest, the cost of development remains a dauntingly high barrier to tres), 5.64 g/t over 6.7 metres, 3.35 g/t over 19.2 metres, 4.79 g/t over 20.8
entry for such as Sabina Gold & Silver. metres, 15.42 g/t over 6 metres and 13.43 g/t over 24.4 metres (including
72.8 g/t over 3 metres).
Manojlovic comments, “We’re quite excited about the results that we’ve
released. Certainly the highlight was the hole that returned 13 g/t over 24
metres. The deposit now extends from, basically, near surface at the north
down to about 650 metres at the south end, which is where that hole is. It
demonstrates the incredible continuity of the deposit over 1.4 kilometres.
The thickness is very consistent as well.”
He continues, “We hope to complete our drilling and get those resources
and begin a preliminary economic assessment of the project this fall. We
see that as having a high likelihood of being positive. We would progress as
rapidly as we can once we reach that stage.”
Sabina believes that Ontario’s Timmins and Kirkland Lake mining districts
presented similar challenges to what the Far North faces today, and as
awareness of Nunavut increases infrastructure will follow. Prime Minister
Harper made a step in this direction August 24 with the investment of
$230,000 in the establishment of an Iqaluit office for the Northwest Ter-
In response to this challenge, Sabina announced June 2 that it had sold its ritories and Nunavut Chamber of Mines. More important, perhaps, is the
Nunavut Hackett River Project and some Wishbone Greenbelt Belt claims investment in Nunavut by other miners. Apart from numerous juniors explor-
to Swiss mining giant Xstrata for $50 million and a silver production royalty ing there, majors include Agnico-Eagle—whose Meadowbank gold mine
equal to 22.5% of the first 190 million ounces of payable silver and 12.5% began production June 2011—as well as ArcelorMittal, Areva, Newmont,
thereafter. President/CEO Tony Walsh explained that the deal “transforms BHP Billiton and Xstrata.
Sabina into a purely precious metals company… Our goal is to become a
mid-tier gold company producing between 300K to 400K ounces of gold However, according to an August 31 Reuters story, Agnico-Eagle has
per year from Back River, a project scope we believe we can expedite.” invested $1.5 billion in Meadowbank, while “Newmont has spent $2 billion
so far on its Hope Bay gold deposits in western Nunavut, and there is no
The Back River gold project, located about 60 kilometres from Hackett guarantee a mine will ever be built.”
River (and 70 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle), consists of seven claim
blocks, the most important of which are the Goose Lake and George prop- Nevertheless, Manojlovic concludes, “We’re extremely excited about Back
erties. Since acquiring the project from Dundee Precious Metals in 2009, River. Sabina has been working on the project for about two years, and
drilling has focussed largely on Goose, and the discovery of the Llama and in those two years we’ve made a number of new discoveries, the most
Umwelt deposits there have considerably increased the project’s resources. significant of which are the Umwelt deposit and the Llama deposit. We’ve
In March 2011 Sabina announced a new resource estimate for Back River increased resources there quite substantially, so we have very high confi-
of 2.66 million ounces gold indicated—more than doubling the existing dence that we will continue to increase resources and bring the project to
indicated resource—and 1.56 million ounces gold inferred. the mining stage.”
The objective of Sabina’s 2011 drill campaign is to add at least another Sabina Gold & Silver currently has 160.3 million shares trading at $4.88 for
“
700,000 ounces of gold to the resource. VP Exploration Manojlovic tells a $782.2 million market cap. Sabina also has three early-stage exploration
Resource Clips, “We’re still drilling up there right now, and we will be until projects in Ontario’s Red Lake mining district.
the end of September. We have nine drills currently turning. We have five
drills working on the Umwelt itself—we’re expanding that deposit. Last year
we drilled about 550 metres at the top end of that deposit, brought it to a re- We have very high confidence that we
source, and this year we’re drilling to get the additional mineralization to the will continue to increase resources and
south. Once we’re done at the end of September, we’ll be working on doing
the resource from that 550 metres down to however deep we take it by the
bring the project to the mining stage
end of September. We would hope to get [the updated resource] out by 4Q.” – Peter Manojlovic
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