The PEA will scope an open pit mine with heap leach processing of oxide and transition materials
Kore Mining launches preliminary economic assessment for Long Valley gold project. (Credit: PublicDomainPictures from Pixabay)
KORE Mining has commenced work on a Preliminary Economic Assessment (“PEA”) of the Long Valley project (“Project” or “Long Valley”) located in Mono County California. Engineering is well advanced, with results expected in late Q3 2020.
Scott Trebilcock, President and CEO stated, “Long Valley is a large, shallow gold deposit with great oxide heap leach metallurgy. The Long Valley PEA will come as an important milestone for Kore as we continue to extract value out of our advanced heap leach projects in the United States. The Imperial PEA was a significant catalyst for KORE and we expect the Long Valley PEA will continue to demonstrate the quality of our world-class assets.”
Mr. Trebilcock continued, “The Long Valley PEA will also demonstrate why KORE is allocating capital to the Long Valley deposit, which remains open for exploration in shallow oxides and for new sulphide discoveries. KORE has the funding to advance our assets, deliver catalysts and take advantage of the strong gold market.”
The PEA will scope an open pit mine with heap leach processing of oxide and transition materials. The Project is expected to benefit from nearby skilled labour, major highways and power infrastructure. Long Valley has extensive oxide metallurgical testing which showed the oxide and transition materials are amenable to heap leaching and has the potential for high recoveries. The shallow nature of the deposit will enable full compliance with California’s stringent reclamation requirements including backfilling in the PEA.
The current mineral resource estimate is 1,247,000 ounces of Indicated gold and 486,000 ounces of Inferred gold from 66.8 million tonnes of 0.58 grams per tonne and 23.6 million tonnes of 0.65 grams per tonne, respectively. The mineral resource consists of oxide, transition and sulphides. The estimate was prepared by Neil Prenn, P.E., and Steven Weiss, C.P.G. of Mine Development Associates with an effective date of November 15, 2019. More information is available in the technical report filed on www.sedar.com and on KORE’s website at www.koremining.com.
Long Valley was historically assayed almost exclusively for gold. The limited silver assays on the project showed up to 10 times the gold grade in silver. This represents a future upside for the project that will not be included in the PEA, but will likely be incorporated in future resource updates and reported with new drilling.
On January 30, 2020 and March 24, 2020, KORE announced results from several rounds of ground geophysics, soil sampling and rock sampling at Long Valley. The work generated multiple drill targets to grow shallow oxide mineralization, opening the deposit to growth on-strike and laterally. The geophysics also generated clear sulphide feeder structure drill targets to make new discoveries at depth and open a new frontier for exploration at the Project. Sulphide potential is further highlighted by the fact that 44% of historic drill holes ended in gold mineralization exceeding the cut-off grade of the deposit, with bottom hold grades as high as 4.8 grams per tonne.
Permitting for drill testing highest priority targets is underway.
About Long Valley Gold Project
Long Valley is a 100% owned gold project located in Mono County, California – see Figure 1. Within the Project, is the Long Valley deposit, an intact epithermal gold deposit (“Deposit”) with a shallow, large 2.5 by 2 kilometer oxide gold footprint. A total of 896 holes have been drilled on the Project, the majority being completed by reverse circulation with lesser core, rotary and air track. The average depth of drilling is less than 90 meters below surface. Figure 1 shows the claims, drill collar locations and mineralized area.
Source: Company Press Release