12 July 2022
On July 12, Sabina Gold & Silver Corp (SBB.T/SGSVF.OTCQX), announced the start of a five-week exploration field mapping and sampling program at the George Project (“George”) on its 100%-owned Back River Gold Project (“Back River” or the “Project”) in Nunavut, Canada.
With the Goose Mine currently being advanced towards first gold production in 2025, exploration efforts now start to turn to George, the second most advanced of the five designated project areas within Sabina’s Back River Gold District. George, located approximately 60 km north of the Goose Mine, is host to 20 km of prospective iron formation with current resources of 7.1 M tonnes at 5.34 g/t Au for 1.2 M oz in the Indicated category and an additional 5.4 M tonnes at 6.12 g/t au for 1.1 M oz in the Inferred category. All deposits are open to depth.
The George Project hosts a stand-alone camp currently being readied for this year’s program with a capacity of up to 60 people. George has not been worked for almost 10 years, while Sabina focused on advancing the Goose Mine towards production. The opening of George camp and this year’s field program continues the phased strategy for pipeline growth in the Back River Gold District.
George offers significant potential as a satellite mine with a suite of over 25 compelling exploration targets. 2022 exploration will focus on evolving the structural framework and controls on gold mineralization to better understand and prioritize drilling targets for new discovery and resource growth both at George and at the other project areas on the District.
“George is the Back River Gold District’s second most advanced project. As we have been busy moving Goose forward, we have not operated at George for almost a decade. Since that time, significant progress and success has been made at Goose to unravel the geological signature of these Back River Iron formations. We are eager to apply some of these successful strategies to the prospective geology and existing deposits at George,” stated Bruce McLeod, President and CEO of Sabina. “With an expanded scale of over 20 km of iron formation identified to date at George versus the 8 km at Goose, there is significant opportunity for new discovery. With a strong gold endowment, an established resource estimate of over 2 million ounces of gold and a slate of prospects and drill targets, George makes Sabina unique with its own growth portfolio. We believe that the Back River Gold District is a world class project that will become a multi-generational gold producer.”
Exploration at George will be carried out by Sabina geologists and consulting geologists with expertise in structural analysis and Archean gold systems. Programs will consist of re-logging of select historic drill core sections and targeted field evaluations to build a revised structural map that will provide critical controls on gold mineralization. Field work objectives are to better define stratigraphy, deposit and property scale mineral controls, and mineral paragenesis with the ultimate goal of building an enhanced property wide geologic model for George. Targeted mapping and sampling objectives will be completed at prioritized zones with anomalous gold values, as highlighted by historic data evaluation, and along projected strike of major gold trends. Results from the summer field program will be used to inform targeting and planning for future exploration drilling.
The geology at the George property is similar to that at the Goose property where Beechey Lake Group turbiditic sediments are host to significant iron formation horizons and associated mineralization and intruding felsic to intermediate sills, dykes, and small shallow to steeply dipping felsic intrusions.
The main gold endowment at the George deposits is located within oxide iron formation, with minor gold mineralization hosted within silicate iron formation and surrounding sediments. Gold bearing zones are associated with sulphide concentrations in the iron formation and are commonly accompanied by increased quartz veining and increased alteration of the surrounding rocks. Visible gold is commonly associated with elevated sulphide occurrence primarily comprised of pyrrhotite, pyrite, and arsenopyrite.
Three distinct fold belts are defined and named from west to east, the George Belt, the Fold Nose Belt, and the Lookout Hill Belt. The relationship between these spatially separate domains has not been clearly established. However, common stratigraphy within the three belts suggests that they may represent one continuous sequence of iron formation that has been separated and repeated by faulting and folding. All belts contain gold occurrences, however the largest and most important deposits located to date occur within the George Belt where Locale 1, Locale 2, and the GH deposits combine for resources of 802,000 oz gold at 5.01 g/t Au in Indicated, plus 924,000 oz gold at 6.21 g/t Au in Inferred, are aligned along a 7 km plus strike length. This well-endowed gold trend remains under explored with the majority of past drilling occurring at the deposit scale to average depths of 300m. Significant exploration opportunity exists both laterally and at depth as deposit extensions, and along the gold trend between deposits within the George fold belt.
To the east of the George belt, the Fold Nose Belt and the Lookout Hill Belt are host to 2.2 M tonnes at 6.12 g/t Au for 425,000 oz in Indicated, and 742,000 tonnes at 5.53 g/t Au for 132,000 oz in Inferred resources, representing strong gold trends with considerable upside exploration potential for new discovery and deposit growth.
The current target book at George, a targeting work up of historic data, is comprised of over 25 prioritized exploration opportunities, each defined by compelling characteristics combining elements of gold anomalism, altered and mineralized iron formation host rock and variable combinations of geophysical survey response. Two examples of targets that represent prioritized drill targets at George are Tupik North and Lookout Hill.
The Tupik North target is located approximately 1 km NW of the Tupik Deposit (formerly named Slave) resource (239,000 tonnes at 4.82 g/t Au for 37,000 oz in Indicated, plus 468,000 tonnes at 5.05 g/t au for 76,000 oz in Inferred) and is defined by a 15 to 25 meter thick north plunging package of folded iron formation in a synclinal/ anticlinal pair. Historic drilling completed in the late 80’s early 90’s targeted the upper portions of a mineralized zone in a limited series of relatively shallow drill holes depths. Two examples of the better mineralized intersections include drill hole 89B507 which returned 18.69 m of 6.88g/t Au and drill hole 90B507 which returned 10.75 m of 2.40 g/t Au.
The Lookout Hill target has geometric and geologic aspects similar to the Llama Gold Deposit with both locations hosting significant iron formation in synformal structures over significant strike lengths greater than 1.5 km. Historic drilling at Lookout hill totals 2,949 m in 14 holes, with the deepest drill hole vertical depth being approximately 415 m. Results from drilling show significant intersection of moderately folded oxide iron formation, with strong quartz veining, shear controlled sulphide mineralization (dominantly pyrite with minor arsenopyrite) and local occurrences of visible gold. The best intercept to date is from hole 11GRL022 which returned 11.50 m of 7.08 g/t Au.
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