Chris Lee, P.Geo., Chief GeoScientist, Pure Gold Mining
Speaker Bio:
Mr. Lee is a registered professional geologist with over 25 years of experience in mineral exploration and resource evaluation. He specializes in structural analysis of ore deposits for application to grade control, resource estimation and generation of predictive exploration models. Mr. Lee spent seven years with SRK providing specialist structural geology guidance for projects located globally, across a variety of commodities and at all stages from exploration through to development and production. He has significant experience in the Red Lake district, including the Goldcorp Challenge where he placed as a semi-finalist. Most recently, Mr. Lee was Chief Geoscientist at True Gold Mining and Fronteer Gold where he was the Qualified Person responsible for resource modeling, estimation and growth of over 14 million ounces of gold in mining assets located in Burkina Faso, Turkey and Nevada.
Talk Abstract:
Construction at the PureGold Red Lake Mine is well underway with 26 weeks to production of our first gold bar. At 9 g/t, this will be one of the highest grade gold mines in Canada with a current probable reserve of 1.0 million ounces of gold (3.5 Mtonnes @ 9.0 g/t Au) within a broader indicated resource of 2.0 million ounces (7.2 Mtonnes @ 8.9 g/t Au), and an additional inferred resource of 0.5 million ounces (1.9 Mtonnes @ 7.7 g/t Au). The mine will produce 800 tonnes per day, using a combination of long hole and cut-and-fill mining methods, at an all-in-sustaining-cost of USD $787/oz, delivering a 51% IRR at USD $1500/oz.
The deposit, which includes the former Madsen and Starratt Olsen mines (cumulative historic production of 2.6 Mozs Au) and related extensions, is located in the prolific Red Lake mining district of Northwestern Ontario, where over 28 million ounces of high grade gold have been produced over the last ~90 years. The district is well-known for its widespread development of greenstone-hosted quartz-carbonate vein gold deposits, typical of the orogenic gold class; however, the PureGold Red Lake deposit has been generally regarded as unusual, or ‘atypical’, of this class.
The deposit has been variably interpreted as being stratabound and related to ‘early’ alteration and manto-style replacement mineralization, or, alternatively, as being shear zone-hosted and synchronous with deformation and metamorphism. More recent work over the past 5 years, which has focused at both the property-scale and mine-scale controls on mineralization, has revealed that, despite recording higher than normal metamorphic grades and pre-dating peak deformation and metamorphism in the belt, gold was emplaced within a more typical, structurally-controlled system with all the familiar features of that style of deposit. Recognition of these controls underpins Pure Gold’s recent discovery successes and continues to refine our targeting and resource modeling strategies.
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