Resource World Magazine

40 www.resourceworld.com A U G U S T / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 1 7 own a 19.9% stake in the company. Its portfolio includes 30 properties cover- ing 390,000 hectares. Headed by Shawn Ryan, the company's technical advisor, White Gold is using exploration tech- niques developed by Ryan's company GroundTruth Exploration to speed up the process of finding gold-bearing anomalies. Ryan is quick to stress the high risk nature of early stage exploration. "We know that 95% of the things that we look at are not going to make the cut,'' he said. So, to save time and money, GroundTruth uses a number of tools, including air-borne drone imagery, GT Rotary Air Blast Drills (RAB) and portable X-ray fluorescence (XRF). A RAB drill is a remotely controlled platform that is mounted on a track and can travel almost anywhere on a mineral property. Used in combination with drones and XRF tech- nology, it provides a more cost effective, environmentally friendly way to con- duct exploration, allowing prospectors to extend their budgets while checking min- eralized systems. "What used to take us two field sea- sons at a cost of $500,000, I can now do in a month for about $100,000," Ryan said. However, he went on to explain that while RAB drills can be used to assess a project's mineral potential, companies still need to rely on diamond core drilling and reverse circulation techniques. Victoria Gold Corp. [VIT-TSXV] is developing what is expected to be the largest hard rock gold mine in the Yukon's history. The Eagle gold project, located 85 km north of Mayo, is expected to produce 200,000 ounces of gold annually using heap leach processing methods, starting in early 2019. Victoria Gold President and CEO, John McConnell, said the mine is being built at a cost of US $300 million and construction crews are preparing to start the "site cap- ture phase," one that will focus on the high risk areas of the build. Those include heap leach earth works, crusher foundations, and the improvement of various roads at the mine site. However, McConnell said the company is facing a US $40 million con- struction funding gap that will need to be filled within the next six to eight months. Production is expected to come from the Eagle and Olive deposits, which contain 2.7 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves. Meanwhile, the company is currently probing other targets on the 555 km 2 property with the aim of "dem- onstrating additional, definable resource gold deposits across the highly prospective Dublin Gulch property," McConnell said. Back in April 2017, the company launched a $6.2 million exploration program that will focus on the Olive-Shamrock deposit, a high-grade satellite of the Eagle gold project. The company also plans to probe targets along the 13-km Potato Hills trend. Western Copper and Gold Corp. [WRN-TSX, NYSE MKT] When news of the tailings pond breach at Imperial Metals Corp.'s Mount Polley copper and gold mine in British Columbia began to spread in August 2014, Western Copper officials were conducting a tour of the Casino Project. News of the disaster proved inopportune for Western Copper, which will likely face a higher level of scrutiny as it moves to secure permits for its own tailings facility. When reporters toured the Casino site recently, President and CEO, Paul West-Sells, said the permitting process will likely take another three years. The geology at Casino is typi- cal of many porphyry copper deposits. The property hosts 965 million tonnes of proven and probable reserves, containing 4.5 billion pounds of copper and almost 9 million ounces of gold. That should sustain an open pit operation that is expected to cost $2.5 billion to develop for a minimum of 22 years. Molybdenum will account for roughly 15% of the total revenue, West- Sells said. The consensus is that this project may remain on the shelf for a while until copper prices improve. Another key chal- lenge is the need to upgrade 130 km of access road. Meanwhile, the company

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