TomaGold is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with Planet Exploration Inc. ("Planet") to acquire all of its interest in the Sidace Lake gold property, namely a stake of 39.5% (the "Sidace property"), located 25 km northeast of Balmertown in the Red Lake mining camp, Ontario.
The Sidace property consists of 42 mining claims. The remaining 60.5% interest in the property is owned by Goldcorp Inc. ("Goldcorp") under the terms of a joint venture.
Since 1998, when Planet first took an interest in the property, 246 diamond drill holes totalling 90,142 metres of NQ core have been drilled on the Sidace property.
On April 14, 2009, the joint venture announced a National Instrument 43-101 ("NI 43-101") compliant independent technical review of the Sidace property, including a mineral resource estimate on the two most advanced of six prospects on the claims, the Main Discovery Zone ("MDZ") and the Upper Duck Zone ("UDZ").
The technical report was produced on April 19, 2009, by Watts, Griffis and McOuat Limited ("WGM"), a geological engineering firm based in Toronto, Ontario. The mineral resource estimate was prepared from two separate block models, each using a 1.5 g/t Au cut-off grade and a 35 g/t Au high grade cap, based on a gold price of US$800/oz and a US$:C$ exchange rate of 1:1.2. TomaGold has undertaken to update the said technical report 43-101 within the next 180 days.
"This is a great transaction for TomaGold, as we are acquiring an interest in a gold mineralized system with tremendous potential," said David Grondin, President and CEO of TomaGold.
"The property has NI 43-101 indicated and inferred resources of over 360,000 ounces of gold, which could be increased by additional exploration work. Other strong qualities include four additional promising exploration targets and the current resource remains open along strike and at depth.
"The property is also located in the renowned Red Lake mining camp, close to mining and milling infrastructure and qualified personnel. This is simply a great addition to our growing portfolio of advanced gold mining projects in Canada, which includes the Monster Lake and Obalski projects."
The Red Lake mining camp hosts several gold mines, where the combined production and remaining proven resources are more than 30 million ounces of gold. Initial gold production occurred at the Howey mine in 1930, and two mines (Campbell and Red Lake) remain in operation today.
The largest mines historically are Placer Dome’s Campbell mine (cumulative production and remaining resources of 13 million ounces) (now owned by Goldcorp), Goldcorp’s Red Lake (10 million ounces) and Madsen mines (2.5 million ounces).