Benchmark Metals - Drilling 50,000m in 2020
Anyone who has been involved in the junior mining sector has heard about the Golden Triangle in BC. This is an area that has a lot of interest due to the many mines and deposits of mineral rich ground. Some of the highest grade gold mines in world are in this area and it's not only juniors that are here. There are some major interests also either through financing or partnerships etc. But just outside of this so called triangle is what is known as the Golden Horseshoe as you'll see in the image below and Benchmark Metals BNCH has some pretty big plans for 2020 and beyond in this area.
The project that Benchmark is working on is called the Lawyers Project. It would be concidered a brownfield exploration project because there was an active gold mine there that operated from 1989-1992. This mine produced 171,000 oz gold and 3.6 million oz silver over the 4-year period. The land package that the company has consists of 127 sq. km and most of this area has never really been explored. The Lawyers mine is located on what is called the Lawyers trend and that trend is about 20 Km in length. An added bonus is the fact that there is an estimated $50 million in infrastructure that is on the property, including year-round road access.
The company has done drilling and limited exploration but some recent high grade intercepts include:
- 259.76 g/t Au & 3,320.3 g/t Ag over 3 m
- 108.36 g/t Au & 911.2 g/t Ag over 7 m
- 86.06 g/t Au & 583.83 g/t Ag over 7 m
Some select bulk-tonnage drilling intercepts from the Lawyers Trend include:
- 6.96 g/t Au & 254.70 g/t Ag over 57.9 m
- 5.76 g/t Au & 128.65 g/t Ag over 33.53 m
- 4.06 g/t Au & 409.06 g/t Ag over 40.9 m
The old mine site deposit has a non 43-101 open pit resource of 1.92 million ounces identified within the Cliff Creek zone at 0.5 g/t cutoff. Mangement plans are to expand this resource towards 5 million oz. To do so, the company has a 50,000 meter drill program utilizing 5 drill rigs this summer. There will also be geological work and mapping. With this many rigs drilling there will be a steady stream of news which if positive will be good for share price. Investors love news, Especially good drill news.
The company has 113 million shares and has raised in excess of $24 million and attracted cornerstone investments from Eric Sprott and several large institutional funds. The trading range has been from 17 cent low to 49 cent high where it is at the time of this writing.
The Golden Triangle and Horseshoe area of BC are going to see a lot of action this year. With gold price hitting record highs in CAD dollars and a gold bull market in general there will be plenty lots of news and the market is bound to see a lot higher stock prices for juniors in this area.
An added note of disclosure, I am long shares in Benchmark Metals at the time of this writing.
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