By ADELLE LARMOUR
Buy low, drill deep and sell high is the thrust behind Queenston Mining Inc.
This junior miner has an accumulated land holding of approximately 14,000 hectares representing the largest land package in the Kirkland Lake Mining Camp. The company assembled much of its land claims over the last 15 years when gold wasn’t a high priority.
CEO and president Charles Page says they saw the value of acquiring land with proven mining camps, aware of the potential for new discoveries. Consequently, the focus has been upon land acquisition along a regional gold structure called the Larder Lake break, where Queenston Mining’s package spans about 27 kilometres.
During the last five years, metal prices have almost doubled in value, making deeper drilling more economically viable.
“Our basic philosophy is that the easy deposits (on surface) have been found,” says Page. “We’re looking for the deeper ones and the only way to discover these is with deep drilling. That is our main exploration tool.”
With $7 million in working capital, Queenston is investing $5 million in exploration in the Kirkland Lake area. The 100 per cent-owned Upper Beaver property is presently their highest profile project. Located in the northeast section of Gauthier Township, it was the former gold-producing Argonaut Mine from the early 1900s. Seventy-four holes have been drilled to date since 2005. Initial surface surveys and geophysics were performed. Page saw potential below the former mine workings, and set up drills looking for extensions and repetitions of the mineralization at depth.
With at least six zones established, about 80 per cent of the 74 holes drilled had significant gold-copper intersections in them, according to Page. The Porphyry and Lower Gauthier Zones extend laterally along strike about 450 metres, and about 450 m vertically for the Porphyry and 350 m for the Lower Gauthier.
Some examples of intersections are 20.3 grams of gold (Au) per tonne (g/t) with two per cent copper (Cu) over 10.7 m from the Porphyry, and 26.8 g/t Au over 3.0 m from the Lower Gauthier.
“Some of our intersections will have a value close to $200 to $250 per tonne in terms of metal value in the ground,” Page says, batting around some preliminary numbers.
Positive drill results led the company to complete an in-house resource calculation. Encouraged by the numbers, they raised $3 million to finance a 44,000-m resource drill program currently underway. They’ve also retained an international geological and engineering firm to assist in the NI 43-101 mineral resource calculation. Page anticipates the drill program’s completion early in the fourth quarter.
“We’re quite excited about the focus of that going forward in turning Queenston back into a gold-producing company again.”
Although the Upper Beaver property is a prominent driver, the company has many other irons in the fire. Six kilometres south of Upper Beaver are the McBean (past producer of 50,000 oz.) and Anoki properties each with historic resources of about 14.2 million grams (0.5 million oz.). To date, Queenston has spent about $450,000 on a 6,000-m resource drill program on the McBean property.
Ultimately, the goal is to combine production from McBean, Anoki and Upper Beaver to feed into one milling facility at the old Upper Canada Mine site (past producer of 1.6 million oz), where the company would construct a mill to compliment the existing tailings facility.
Presently, their exploration headquarters is located at the Upper Canada Mine office in Gauthier Township.
Another advanced project is Queenston’s joint venture with Kirkland Lake Gold (KLG) on the Kirkland Lake West property owned by Newmont Mining Inc. Both Queenston and KLG have the right to earn 50 per cent in the project by spending $2.5 million over a four-year period.
They are exploring underground (4,750 ft. level) to the west of the continuation of the main gold structure called the Kirkland Lake-Larder Lake main break from where 24 million oz of gold was produced. Should they find the continuation of the break, it could generate some cash flow for Queenston to bring its Ontario projects to fruition and spur on further exploration.
