Resource World Magazine

36 www.resourceworld.com O C T O B E R / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 7 FIELD REPORT Peggy Witte and her former company, Royal Oak, may be part of Northwest Territories gold mining history but that hasn't prevented a Toronto-based junior from picking up where Royal Oak left off at the Colomac gold mine property north of Yellowknife. Nearly 20 years after Royal Oak declared bankruptcy, Nighthawk Gold Corp. [NHK-TSX] is taking a fresh look at Colomac amid speculation that the former Chatelaine Magazine Woman of the Year may have misinterpreted the geology and therefore vastly underestimated the poten- tial around a former open pit mine that produced 528,000 ounces of gold between 1990 and 1997. "Royal Oak put [the mine] into produc- tion without really understanding the geological model that they were working with,'' said Nighthawk President and CEO, Michael Byron. "Maybe if [Witte] had known what she was working with, she could have drawn more interest,'' he said. With backing from a number of high profile investors, including Kinross Gold Corp. [K-TSX; KGC-NYSE] and finan- cier Robert Cudney's Northfield Capital, Nighthawk is one of a group of junior com- panies which have acquired large property positions in the territories of NWT and Nunavut in the hope that they can cre- ate sufficient value through exploration to attract the interest of major mining companies. The work that these companies are doing is once again putting the spotlight on a vast region both north and south of the Arctic Circle that came into focus fol- lowing the discovery of the Ekati and Diavik diamond mines during the early 1990s. When Resource World travelled to the city of Yellowknife to join a tour of the Colomac site, it was clear that companies choosing to work in this region face a myr- iad of challenges. The obvious ones are the extreme cold, the constant threat of bear attacks and short exploration seasons. Less obvious is the lack of road access and high cost of helicopter support that is required to transport personnel and equipment to the exploration camps. But analysts and industry officials also point to the wealth of opportunities, espe- cially in areas that have seen relatively little exploration in comparison to more accessible regions of the world. The US Geological Survey has esti- mated that the Arctic region – an area that stretches across Nunavut, NWT, Russia and Scandanavia – has 30% of the world's undiscovered natural gas and 15% of the oil. In Greenland, for example, the melting ice is creating opportunities by unleashing a wealth of zinc, uranium, gold and rare earth elements that some predict will be the largest deposits outside of China. Last year, legislation was passed in Greenland and Denmark that will permit LEFT: Left to right are Agora Financial Editor Byron King, Nighthawk Gold Senior Project Manager William Waychison, and Nighthawk CEO Michael Byron. They are at the Damoti Lake gold property, north of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. Photo by Peter Kennedy. The Far North brings its own challenges and opportunities by Peter Kennedy

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