A Look At Skeena Resources
Gold saw a slight rally in the first month of 2020 going from $1520 to breifly go past $1600 on the Iran issue, then leveling off in the upper $1,500 range. Silver is pretty much unchanged however platinum and palladium both showed great gains in the first month of the year. Most miners and explorers have showed little reaction to this price movement. Infact although gold is at historic highs in a lot of currencies other than the USD, most mining stocks are well off their 52 week highs. Most junior stocks are pretty much on 52 week lows with very little trading volumes, but there are a few that are beating that scenario and are flirting with new highs.
One of those juniors is Skeena Resources SKE which has been drilling out some pretty impressive drill results in the Golden Triangle of north west British Columbia. Skeena's main focus is the exploration and development of the past-producing Eskay Creek mine, which currently contains a combined Indicated & Inferred open-pit resource of 4 million ounces at 4.4 g/t gold equivalent. Skeena is also exploring the past-producing Snip gold mine.
Giving you a bit of brief history, in 2017 Skeena resources aquired an option to acquire 100% interest in the Eskay Creek property from Barrick Gold. The Eskay Creek Mine produced approximately 3.3 million ounces of gold and 160 million ounces of silver at average grades of 45 g/t gold and 2,224 g/t silver and was once the world's highest-grade gold mine and fifth-largest silver mine by volume. Over the 14-year life of the mine, approximately 2.2 million tonnes of ore was mined with cut-off grades ranging from 12-15 g/t gold equivalent for mill ore and 30 g/t gold equivalent for smelter ore. The last few new releases have showed the investing public just what kind of potential Eskay Creek has to offer. January 14 news read: Skeena resources intersects 14.73 g/t AuEq over 36.85 m at Eskay Creek.
The Eskay Creek property consists of 8 mineral leases, 2 surface leases and several unpatented mining claims totaling 6,151 hectares. Skeena resoucres released an upgraded pit constrained resource estimate for Eskay Creek on February 28th, 2019. The pit constrained Indicated resource includes 2.46 million gold equivalent ounces within 12.7 million tonnes at an average gold equivalent grade of 6.0 g/t. The pit constrained Inferred resource includes 1.23 million gold equivalent ounces within 13.6 million tonnes at an average gold equivalent grade of 2.8 g/t.
Also in 2017, Skeena acquired 100% interest in the past-producing Snip mine from Barrick Gold. The property consists of one mining lease and four mineral tenures totaling approximately 1,932 hectares in the Liard Mining Division. The Snip mine produced approximately one million ounces of gold from 1991 until 1999 at an average gold grade of 27.5 g/t. News coming out of Snip also have been encouraging as well. January 9 news read: 16.64 g/t Au over 5.10 m in 200 footwall at Snip. December 18 news read: Skeena intersects 1,131.91 g/t (36.39 oz/t) gold over 1.50 m in new footwall mineralization at Snip.
Additional drill results for 2019 include:
16.64 g/t Au over 5.10 m
Including: 96.20 g/t Au over 0.50 m
And 39.80 g/t Au over 0.85 m
57.90 g/t Au over 0.65 m
57.00 g/t Au over 0.50 m
12.00 g/t Au over 1.35 mThe Snip vein mineralization was discovered in 1964 by Cominco geologist Ted Muraro. Those drill results triggered a massive claim staking rush and exploration boom throughout the Golden Triangle that led to the discovery and development of Barrick Gold's Eskay Creek (past production of 3.27 million ounces of gold at a grade of 49 g/t and 158 million ounces of silver at 2,406 g/t). The Snip mine produced 1.1 million ounces of gold at average grade of 27.5g/t from 1991 to 1999.
In the Janucary 14 news release the company stated that there were 4 land based drill rigs on the Eskay Creek property and anticipates commencement of the ground based 2020 Phase I infill and exploration drilling program in February.
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