The Noyon Gold Project is located Noyon Township, Quebec, 25 kilometres south of Matagami, Quebec and 530 kilometres northwest of Montreal. Access to paved highway 109, as it passes north to Matagami, is by approximately five kilometres of all-weather forestry roads. The property covers the eastern extension of Agnico Eagle's Vezza deposit and it is on the Casa Berardi Break or deformation zone, which also hosts the Agnico Eagle, Vior, Golden Hope and Golden Knight deposits.
Property Ownership
The project property consists of two contiguous claim blocks; the 113-claim, 1600-hectare Northway block and the contiguous 114 claim, 2,000-hectare Noyon block. International Taurus Resources Inc acquired the Cyprus Canada 75-percent interest in the project in 2000 (Taurus recently merged with American Bonanza Gold Mining Corp to form American Bonanza Gold Corp). A 25-percent carried interest remains in the hands of Northway Exploration Ltd. On the Northway block, there is a four-percent Net Smelter Return royalty, which may be bought down to two percent. On the Noyon block, there is a two percent Net Smelter Return royalty, which may be bought out entirely.
Previous Exploration
Previous work on the Northway portion of the property includes a regional AEM helicopter-borne survey totaling 2,440 line-kilometres, 100-metre-grid ground-magnetic and HELM surveys and a 400-metre-spaced IP survey. Seventy reverse circulation drill holes and 145 diamond drill holes totaling 29,000 metres have been completed. Five zones of gold mineralization, related to volcanic-sedimentary rock contacts, have been identified.
Kerr Addison conducted geophysical surveys over portions of the Noyon property as early as 1985. Two reverse-circulation overburden-drilling programs (113 holes) and 18 diamond-drill holes (3,539 metres) have been completed.
Cyprus calculated a Northway property "geological resource" of 18.2 million tonnes grading 1.48 grams of gold per tonne. From context, it cannot be determined if this "geological resource" is equivalent to any NI 43-101-compliant resource. This information is presented only in a historical context and should not be relied upon by the public. Preliminary metallurgical tests recovered 91.7 percent of the gold in a flotation concentrate. Two direct cyanide tests recovered 84 and 54 percent of the gold but only with a fine grind.
Work has not progressed sufficiently on the Noyon portion of the property to calculate a resource. However, several high-quality drilling targets have been outlined with geochemical and geophysical surveys. Sampling of the basal till at bedrock, which was encountered during reverse-circulation drilling, has located areas of elevated gold-grain counts that coincide with geophysical anomalies.
Geology
The northern part of the Abitibi greenstone belt, in which the Noyon Gold Project lies, consists of east-southeast striking mafic volcanic, pelitic sedimentary, iron formation and mafic to felsic volcaniclastic rock units. Dikes and sills of mafic to felsic composition are common. Regional structure is dominated by several major east-west striking deformation zones, which are intimately associated with gold mineralization.
The property is completely covered with glacial-till overburden, which averages approximately 25 metres in depth. Bedrock geology, based on data from the 344 drill holes, consists of interbedded clastic sedimentary rocks and mafic to felsic volcanic rocks that dip steeply to the south. Contacts are marked by shearing, which is the focus of gold mineralization and associated alteration. There are also numerous altered and mineralized tectonic breccia zones in the volcanic rocks. Major faults trend northwest, northeast and east-west.
Cyprus identified two types of gold mineralization, the "RJ" type, which is associated with silicified graphitic shear zones, and the "A zone" type, which occurs in semi-concordant zones of arsenopyrite within basalt units that are close to contacts with sedimentary rocks. The higher-grade segments of the auriferous zones appear to be in close proximity to the intersection of cross structures with the sheared basalt-sediment contacts.
Work Program and Budget
The next phase of exploration work for the Noyon Gold Project should focus on the Noyon claim-block portion of the property. Cyprus believed that the quality of the Noyon-claims targets surpassed those of the Northway claims and that a successful exploration program on the Noyon portion could add sufficient resources to the overall project to develop an economic operation. A two-phase exploration program is recommended for the Noyon claim-block portion of the project. Phase I on the Noyon portion, which was initially recommended by Cyprus, will consist of a six-hole diamond-drilling program that would test the main, high-priority gold targets. These targets have been chosen on the basis of coincident geochemical and geophysical anomalies overlying interpreted volcanic-sediment contacts. The Phase II program will be contingent upon the results of the Phase I program.
|
