GT Gold Corp - Back in the Saddle

That teaches me for not paying close attention to the market, a spectacular rise in GTT.V share price after some juicy porphyry hits at Saddle North.

Obviously, you can remind me of my terrible comment from my last post (link).

I suck..

So, we'll ignore the drilling at the Saddle deposit, the market doesn't care about these, and focus on the porphyry.

You can get a Leapfrog viewer file here (link) to look at it in 3D-goodness.

At the moment it is early days, we have the data from 3.5 holes (hole TTD062 stopped before hitting the guts of the porphyry), so it is hard to know the full scale of the mineralization (this is me covering my ass), but the IP data may give us a hint.

I'm ignoring the mag data as it doesn't really help us (there is a huge anomaly), but the IP data may give us a potential size of the porphyry system.



and a close up...

It looks like the copper mineralization is found in a 500m long by 200-300m wide zone. From the sections, this zone dips to the SW, and may also dip to the NW (based on the fact that the Western n changeability high associated with the pyrite halo is more subdued, suggesting that it is at greater depth).

I'm also intrigued by the fact that in none of the literature do GT Gold mention any bornite, just chalcopyrite and pyrite. At another small porphyry deposits in the area we see this:

Bornite in the middle like jam in a donut

The best grades are found in the core, which often a lot of bornite, as we see no mention of this, there is a good chance that they still haven't drilled it. My guess is that it will be found to the west of hole TTD092.

Circle marks the spot..

When I look at the Saddle North Plan map (link), I noticed that a couple of the drill-holes, TTD098 and TTD107, don't appear to be optimally located. They appear to be targeting the pyrite halo and may only hit erratic, low-grade intervals (<0.25% CuEq with narrow zones of ~0.5% CuEq).



However, I'll be very interested to see what hole TTD102 gets, this could hit the bornite core and could get some decent, thick intervals of high-grade (>1% CuEq) mineralization.

I'm also interested in hole TTD106, if this gets grades similar to TTD085 (100+m @ >0.3 g/t Au and >0.3% Cu), this would be very positive as when you look at the sections, you can see that the highest grade mineralization starts at ~400m depth.



Is this potentially too deep?

Pretium - Brucejack Q3 Results

Pretium published their Q3 results yesterday (link), and as they are at a steady state in the Brucejack operations, why don't we compare the number to previous quarters.

Au Production

a miss is a miss

Production dropped by 18,700 ounces compared to Q2, 2018 (a 17% drop). This was because:

Au grade

Yup, you've guessed it, we see a corresponding drop in Au grades from 14.9 g/t Au in Q2, to 12.4 g/t Au in Q3. This will always be an issue in high-grade operations due to the nugget effect, where you expect to see +/- 20% changes in production, but over the long term these swings should balance out.

However, if Pretium continue to struggle to make the grade (this is 4 times out of 5 that they have missed), it will put pressure on their resource model.

Recovery

Still great, nothing to worry about here

Mill Throughput

The mill has very slightly under performed, but again, not a significant issue.

So this is again another quarter where Brucejack hasn't hit the expected production outlined in the PEA, they were down 17%, but management is staying positive!



So, to hit that target they need to produce in Q4, 2018:

• 107,359 to 127,359 ounces of gold by....
• maintaining a head-grade between 14.4 g/t and 17 g/t Au

Thought for the day:
If Brucejack had met the production profile in the PEA (i.e. a 'perfect' operation), it would be producing ~120Koz a quarter. Since the start of the year, Brucejack has produced ~75,000 ounces less than predicted in the FS.

I'll let you work out how much that is worth..

Ivanoe - Makoko-loco

Ivanhoe have been finding massive amounts of copper in the DRC at Kamoa-Kakula, but they've just announced a new discovery (link) Makoko.

It was great that they included most of the drilling data in the press release, and from that I have been able to model the mineralization (Leapfrog Model here):

I've also used the data to come up with a resource guesstimate.

Not in the same scale as Kamoa, but a start.

Assumptions: These are based on the data used in the Kamoa PEA

Cut-off: 1% Cu

Specific Gravity: 2.8 to 2.9 depending on the Cu grades (the more Cu, the higher the SG)

Search Ranges: 

• 800m (Kamoa PEA) but 
• I've also included a 1600m range to match the 'limits' used in the various maps that are found on the Ivanhoe website.

You can clearly see that there is a core >4% Cu Zone that appears to be truncated by the Mafic intrusive, but, several wide-spaced holes (>500m apart) appear to show the >2.5% Cu mineralization extending to the SE.

Unfortunately, there appear to be some post-mineral mafic intrusions that appear to truncate the down-dip extension of the >3% Cu mineralization. The  good news is that the at the eastern and western limits of the drilling they are still intersection >2% Cu mineralization over moderate thicknesses (2-5m).

Mafic units in green - I'm assumed that they are approx. vertical cylinders, which is probably wrong 

It will be interesting to see if the Cu horizon continues beyond the intrusions, but if it does, it will be at ~700m depths. There have been a few holes drilled up-dip, but they have returned intervals grading <1% Cu.

Green Unit = Mafic intrusion; thin red unit = Cu bearing horizon.

However, I'm going to guess that my 'estimate' will be low. I've made a few annotations on the plan map above where there is a bit of "artistic license". You'll see how the influence of the low grade intercepts are being reduced to cause the smallest of ripples on the sea of high-grade mineralization that Ivanhoe want to show. It will be interesting if this 'interpretation' continues into the initial resource estimate or if the holes are treated a but more equally.

correction: it should read 800m DIAMETER around each DH

Alpala - Resource Update

Again, following on from the last post about the potential inaccurate grade used for the high-grade zones by Leapfrog in the Nickel Mountain numbers, I've also updated the Alpala resources to include a 2% and 3% CuEq grade shells.



You can see that it has a big impact, I've added an additional 275,000 tonnes which increases the grade of the >0.9% CuEq zone from 1.24% CuEq to 1.36% CuEq.

I should do this more often......

Garibaldi - Resource Update

Just a quick update. It was reported to me that my >2% volume wasn't accurately averaging/estimating the grade for this zone.

Thank you to Anon who alerted me about this.

It seems to be a 'feature' in Leapfrog Geo that for the highest grade grade-shell, it doesn't average the grades of the intervals occurring within the grade-shell, but uses the value I enter for the grade shell, in this case 2%.

What I have done is created an additional grade shell at 4% and here is the result:




It does have a big effect on the >2% mineralization. We have the same tonnes, but I think we have more accurate grades for the various zones.

Thanks to the kind person who pointed that out.

Garibaldi - feedback

As I promised a follow-up.

Here are the questions I asked:

1. Where are the 2018 holes located?
2. How big are the massive sulfide zones?
3. Where can the sulfide zones be extended?

Hole Location

Oh look at that, all of the 2018 holes have been drilled into the Discovery zone, how imaginative.

BTW - holes 01 to 14 were drilled during the 2017 campaign

We also know that Garibaldi have already drilled 21 holes (link) during the 2018 campaign (hole 36 is currently underway according to the PR), but so far we only have the results from the first 8. What is interesting is that Garibaldi haven't included a map showing the locations of the other 12 holes that have already been drilled. I'll let you wonder why....

Magma Highways.......OMG...omg...mmmMMMmmm...spluuuge.

Ok, I've cleaned myself...

Deposit Size

So we have data for 29 drill-holes (7 historic and 22 by Garibaldi) which I've used to calculate the size of the various sulfide zones. Here is a 3D view (again, the model is here).

lots of holes, 2 small zones

I'm only looking at Ni in this analysis as there appears to be an ~2:1 Ni:Cu ratio (I'm working with summary data, so the ratio could be more complicated).

and here you go:




So, it is small and has a veeeeeeeerrrrryyyyy long way to go before it rivals Voiseys Bay (141Mt @ 1.63% Ni), but I'm guessing that the guys at Garibaldi will start to paraphrase Laozi in the upcoming press releases.

Expansion Potential

We're told this at the top of the section.

Sweeeeetttt

Open in all directions, with 29 holes exploring 2 small areas? Did all the holes hit massive sulfide mineralization? Why don't we look in detail.

The next set of figures are quite complicated. I'm drawing a slice through the 2 massive sulfide zones, to see where they are relative to the various drill-holes.

Discovery Zone

Here is a slice through the main zone mineralization. You can see that it has been well drilled (all 8 of the 2018 holes from the recent PR were drilled into this zone) and the holes are ~25m apart.

Left - annotated with drill-hole pierce points; right - Ni mineralization and DH buffers

I've added a 25m radius around each hole. This helps me show areas where mineralization could be expanded with additional drilling.  We can see a couple of areas that are open, to the west beyond hole EL-18-22 and to the east beyond hole EL-17-10 and 14.

Not quite open in all directions, but they could add a few meters more

NW Zone

Remember, none of the 2018 drill results targeted the NW zone.



We can see that this zone is open to the North and partially to the south. If will be interesting to see if any of the 13 holes that have been drilled and the results are pending are drilled into this zone. We can only speculate.

Additional Exploration Targets

Global warming to the Rescue!!!!!



Here it is in all its magnificence:



So we have an outcropping 30-40m long massive sulfide zone ~50m north of the Discovery zone. Has it been drilled, we'll have to wait and see.

How big could it be, we can only guess, but based on the fact that drilling has discovered 2 small massive sulfide bodies, and so it is likely that this will be a third, so small and inconsistent.

TL:DR version: This is what Garibaldi gave CAD $60K and 550,000 shares (CAD $1.03m) for. I'm looking forward to the next set of results, maybe we'll get them by Christmas....

Garibaldi - Italian Hero or Italian Hero?

Everyone loves a good biscuit, but which is better? Rich Tea, Bourbon Cream or a chocolate Hob Knob?

If there are any American readers, Oreos are crap, and Fig Newtons are called Fig Rolls, and Penguins are much better than Tim Tams.

Moving away from the flour-based baked food products, after a rather long time Garibaldi managed to drop a chocolate cobra and publish some drill results.

So all the data has been put in 3D (link) and I want you to download and review the 3D model and check the following:

1. Where are the 2018 holes located?
2. How big are the massive sulfide zones?
3. Where can the sulfide zones be extended?

A bit of a cop out, but I'll write a complete post tomorrow, I wanted people to have a gander at the data first.