News

May 05, 2009

Kirkland Lake Gold Looks In Better Shape Than Ever As New High Grade Intersections Come In And Production Ramps Up

By Alastair Ford

Exploration drilling by Kirkland Lake Gold has just cut a very impressive 21.8 feet grading one ounce per tonne in ore deep below its operating Canadian gold mine. That’s a very nice result indeed, but what might it mean? One highly optimistic, but not completely unrealistic assessment of this drill result, coming as it did 700 feet below the main workings of the Kirkland Lake South Mine Complex (SMC), is that there may be a consistently mineralized zone all the way down. If so that would mean mineralization from the 5,000 feet to 5,300 feet levels at which SMC is currently being worked down to 6,000 feet or lower, and if that’s true, it will blow every analysts’ model on Kirkland Lake out of the water. A more level-headed although still optimistic view would be that the company has just discovered a separate new deeper high grade zone. If so that would bode well for future development and anyone worried about mine life.

Then again, the 21.8 feet at one ounce per tonne may simply prove to be unexplained, or unexplainable. In which case the result might in the end just be a lot of headscratching and blunt drillbits. But, remember that every hole that the Kirkland team has drilled on the SMC in the expectation of hitting ore, has hit ore. The latest result was admittedly the first step-out drilling of its kind from SMC, given that down to 6,000 feet is really too deep to drill from surface, but even if the...