Interview with MAS Gold Corp. - Collecting Channel Samples on the North Lake Gold Deposit; Ron Netolitzky, President and CEO of MAS Gold Corp. (TXSV-MAS): Focused on Gold Exploration Projects in Saskatchewan, along the La Ronge Greenstone Belt
|
By Dr. Allen Alper, PhD Economic Geology and Petrology, Columbia University, NYC, USA
on 12/27/2019
MAS Gold Corp. (TXSV-MAS), https://www.masgoldcorp.com/ is a Canadian mineral exploration company, focused on exploration projects in Saskatchewan, along the La Ronge Greenstone Belt. We learned from Ron Netolitzky, President and CEO of MAS Gold that their goal is to develop over a 1,000, 000 ounces resource from their combined properties in the Belt. At the moment, the most advanced one is their high-grade Greywacke deposit, with 255,500 tonnes @ 9.92 g/t Au of indicated, and 59,130 tonnes @ 7.42 g/t Au of inferred NI 43-101 compliant resource. The bulk sample of 12,000 tonnes of material showed superb metallurgy at 81.3% gravity recovery (94% gravity plus CaCN leaching recovery), with potential of a low-cost operation. MAS Gold's other significant projects include; Preview Lake, North Lake, and Elizabeth Lake also showed high-grade drill results.
MAS Gold Corp.
Dr. Allen Alper: This is Dr. Allen Alper, Editor-in-Chief of Metals News, interviewing Ron Netolitzky, President and CEO of MAS Gold Corp. Ron, could you give our readers/investors an overview of your Company? Also tell them what differentiates your Company from others?
Ron Netolitzky:MAS Gold Corp. is totally focused on the La Ronge gold belt in north central Saskatchewan. We have selected this region because we consider Saskatchewan to be one of the most user-friendly jurisdictions for exploration, globally. They are pro-exploration and pro-mining. We have also picked the La Ronge greenstone belt, in part, due to my history in Saskatchewan. It was the first province in which I actually worked as a student for the government surveys in the 1960s. Then off and on for most of my career, spending time in Saskatchewan looking for gold, uranium and other commodities.
So I feel that it's my backyard, even though I'm an Albertan by background. I think Saskatchewan is my second home. We focused on the La Ronge gold belt for a number of reasons, including numerous high-grade gold occurrences and good infrastructure. One of the major north south highways in the Saskatchewan North essentially parallels the La Ronge greenstone belt, and our ground basically parallels this. So we have infrastructure, including power grids that follow these main highways. It gives us a relatively low cost entry to go and explore within the Province.
Last winter, we completed two exploration programs on two of our properties in the La Ronge belt. We've been working forward on these particular properties, and I'll go through some of the operating history.
Overview of MAS Gold Properties in La Ronge Gold Belt in north-central Saskatchewan, Canada.
Dr. Allen Alper: Can you please give us an understanding of the level of advancement of your properties along the belt? How far along the exploration cycle are they?
Ron Netolitzky: We have some defined resources within our property portfolio. The first one we'll talk about is the Greywacke North deposit, on which we have indicated and inferred resources, indicated resources of 225,500 tonnes of 9.92 grams. On inferred we add another 59,130 tonnes at 7.42 grams per tonne.
We have a series of other deposits along the same structural controls as the Greywacke North deposit that haven't had the same drilling, but we feel have room to expand within the existing structure, and with parallel structures. The grades are really good.
Dr. Allen Alper: How about the recovery potential?
Ron Netolitzky: That is another important part of the story. We've done preliminary metallurgical work on this deposit already. We have actually processed 12,000 tonnes of material, mined from a test pit at the Jolu Mill, when it was operating, producing 2,553 Troy ounces of gold for a calculated grade of 6.87 g/t Au.
The positive things in the bulk samples and the bench scale work, is that we have in excess of 81% gold recovery, with just a simple gravity circuit, Knelson concentrators, and 94% total gold recovery by adding a CaCN reactor at the back end.
Dr. Allen Alper: It looks like there is a potential for some cost savings in this scenario.
Ron Netolitzky: Exactly. This is significant, because it allows us to look at opportunities to put a low cost operation into play on the Greywacke deposit.
Dr. Allen Alper: How about environmental permits, where do you stand with that?
Ron Netolitzky: We have spent extensive money already, doing the baseline environmental work on Greywacke. We have spent in excess of $800,000 on environmental baseline work, so we feel that this is a project we can move rapidly into permitting and feasibility.
Dr. Allen Alper: Does this Greywacke North project have the potential to get bigger?
Ron Netolitzky: Yes it does. On the Greywacke deposit, we have satellite targets plus this Greywacke North, on which we've done extensive drilling and done a 43-101.
We feel that we can expand the Greywacke deposit to depth and along strike to the southwest at the Lyons and Greywacke South areas. Expanding the resource and drilling these targets is what we want to look at this winter, even though we believe we can start with making good money from the existing deposit.
The existing deposit has thicknesses of five meters plus, and those ounces are all less than 200 meters from surface.
So that is one priority target for us to make a production decision and go towards cash-flow, which can then help finance further exploration and development here and along the belt.
Dr. Allen Alper: Greywacke project sounds excellent. How about the other properties in your La Ronge Gold Belt portfolio?
Ron Netolitzky: I'll go through some of the more advanced exploration development targets, which we have farther south in the same belt.
I think it is important to mention that we have a key land position in the Saskatchewan belt, as we have a controlling interest on over 40,000 hectares, which makes us a dominant player in the area.
In addition to the high-grade resource at Greywacke, we have a series of other known deposits farther south, which we think we have the room to expand.
We have conducted two successful winter drilling programs in 2019, the purpose of which was to confirm the historic drilling data. We plan to build on this work this winter, with more drilling. I am talking about North Lake Deposit and Point Deposit.
When it comes to North Lake, we have done sufficient drilling to complete a resource estimate on it. That is already underway.
It will be closely followed by a second deposit we have in the belt, called Point Deposit, located on Ramsland Lake, 5 kilometres south of the North Lake deposit.
MAS Gold Corp Winter drill program conducted on frozen North Lake property in January 2019.
Dr. Allen Alper: Have you thought about the logistics of the production on all these properties? How do you envision that playing out?
Ron Netolitzky: Yes, we put a lot of thought into it, and that’s the beauty of the whole scenario. These are all deposits that are within probably less than 10 kilometers of each other on access roads. So they should be able to support a central mill.
A large part of our focus has been on metallurgy because; if you don't know the recovery potential, you have a very questionable deposit. With good recovery rates, you have options for co-mingling materials.
North Lake, which has just been covered in some recent news releases, shows in excess of 89% of gold we've recovered by a flotation process, and 97 to 99% was obtained on cyanidation, which is truly encouraging.
We're doing further metallurgical tests on Point deposit to make sure it is compatible.
The concept would be to have ounces from these separate deposits feeding into that central mill, as a blend.
By blending a number of deposits we should have enough volume, in excess of a million ounce resource, for a central mill, in the strongly pro-mining focused jurisdiction of Saskatchewan.
Dr. Allen Alper: As you already mentioned, this is by far not a greenfield operation. Can you give our readers/investors a better understanding of the level of existing data, with which you are working?
Ron Netolitzky: On Point Lake or Point deposit, we work with confirmed historic drilling, conducted by a government corporation, at the time called Saskatchewan Mining and Development Company (or “SMDC”, which later became Cameco).
SMDC encountered high-grade gold intersections at Point and they were doing preliminary resource estimates. The work on this particular deposit was halted many years ago. Subsequent to the halting of that deposit, a forest fire came through and burned their quarter rocks to smithereens. So we had all the evidence in their reports, but no physical samples to work with.
We had a couple satellite holes, for which we had the core. So we drilled sufficient holes last winter to confirm those historical results, successfully, and expand gold zones to depth. We also did a number of step out holes that indicated to us that we may have had the plunge direction on the Point deposit incorrect, so we want to take another shot at it this winter.
If we can better understand the geometry of the deposit, we have room for considerable expansion of that particular deposit.
MAS Gold Corp. - Collecting channel samples on the North Lake gold deposit.
The program was conducted in October 2019 and included structural mapping, confirmation sampling of historical surface channel samples and drill hole survey location work.
Dr. Allen Alper: You already mentioned MAS is a dominant player in the area. Is there still a room for building on that position?
Ron Netolitzky: We have tied up a relationship with a neighboring company, Comstock Metals, who has one deposit in the same general area as our Preview Lake Deposit.
They have actually done a 43-101 resource on it. We're in the process of forming a collaborative partnership, with Comstock, to see if we can work together. Because I want to get our threshold up, on the Preview Lake area, to support a second center of production.
Dr. Allen Alper: You seem to have a lot of faith in the geological prospects of the La Ronge Gold Belt. What geological theory is supporting your conviction?
Ron Netolitzky: We consider the La Ronge gold belt and a lot of Saskatchewan to be very perspective. The section, in which we are working, is part of the Lower Proterozoic Trans-Hudsonian Orogeny, specifically domains of island arc and sedimentary basin rocks that have been folded and re-folded, faulted and highly metamorphosed.
What is most interesting, they resemble the kind of settings that we see in West Africa, where the Lower Proterozoic belts are considered to be very prospective for gold.
The area where our projects are located is one of the bigger Lower Proterozoic plays we have in North America, but with much less competition.
The famous Homestake Gold Mine, which is one of the premier gold mines of North America, is in that Trans-Hudsonian orogeny much farther south in the Black Hills of South Dakota. So we believe it makes perfect sense to look to the north.
Dr. Allen Alper: Are there any currently producing mines in the area?
Ron Netolitzky: Activities by major companies in Saskatchewan have been pretty well restricted to SSR mining, at least for now. They bought the Seabee Mine a couple of years ago and the Santoy deposit on the same package of rocks.
They're doing excellently on that particular deposit. They've put it into expanded production, producing in excess of 100,000 ounces of gold in 2019. They've now had over a million ounces of production from those deposits and they have considerable resources that they're building up. SSR’s cost of production is also very low. They're very active.
We're in the same basic rocks, same basic targets. We are both fortunate to be on grid power, but the advantage we have is all weather road access. Seabee and Santoy are air and winter road accessible only. So I think it gives a good support for people to be serious about Saskatchewan.
We hope we will be able to attract some intermediate companies to the play, companies that are going to look at SSRs performance, and look at our geology, and our results and decide that we're very similar. We feel this is a good focus for us, and we're going to continue with this focus for the foreseeable future.
Dr. Allen Alper: Well, that sounds great. Sounds like you have a lot of drilling to do, a lot of exploration and an opportunity to grow your resource, and at some point turn them into reserves. That sounds excellent.
Ron Netolitzky: That's what we're aiming to do with MAS Gold. We're a very tightly held little junior company now. In excess of 50% of the stock is held by less than 50 people, who all know each other and have a similar vision when it comes to this project. However, we are open to adding to this network with new investors, who can become part of our story.
Dr. Allen Alper: Oh, that sounds great. It sounds like you have great properties, a great location, and a great team, led by a well-recognized discoverer. Excellent!
Ron Netolitzky: We have the experience in Saskatchewan, and we have advisors, within our group, that have extensive exploration background in the province that complements what I have. So we're well situated to take advantage of historic knowledge.
Dr. Allen Alper: Well, sounds excellent, Ron! Could you highlight the primary reasons our readers/investors should consider investing in MAS Gold?
Ron Netolitzky: Our goal is to continue expanding or discovering gold, for a million ounce plus deposit, or deposits, in the user-friendly jurisdiction of Saskatchewan."
Dr. Allen Alper: That sounds very effective. You're in a region where you should be able to do it.
Ron Netolitzky: Thank you for doing an article on MAS Gold Corp. for Metals News.
Dr. Allen Alper: I‘ve enjoyed learning about everything you are doing. It sounds very exciting. We’ll publish your press releases as they come out so our readers/investors can follow your progress.
https://www.masgoldcorp.com/
Ronald K. Netolitzky
President & CEO
info@masgoldcorp.com
Tel: 604-685-8592
|
|