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General Market Commentary
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Precious Metals
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General Market Commentary
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General Precious Metals
Abacus acquires new Nevada gold project
Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation has announced that it has acquired a new gold project in Nevada.
The company has signed a letter of intent with a private Nevada company that provides a 15 year lease with annual option payments and the right to purchase the entire property at any time. The aggregate option payments for the first three years total US$85 000 with no work commitments.
The Jersey Valley property is within the Battle Mountain trend of Nevada, in close proximity to both the Phoenix/Fortitude mine complex (approximately 14 million oz gold plus significant Ag and Cu past production and a proposed mine life to 2063) and the Cove/McCoy Mine (3.4 million oz gold and 110 million oz Ag past production). The Jersey Valley property has a well-maintained sealed road running through it, which provides access to a 15 MW geothermal power plant located on the border of the claim group.
Past operators at Jersey Valley have defined two large stocks which intrude a sequence of volcaniclastics, chert, argillite and limestones. The contact with the intrusives is marked by a prominent fault zone filled with silicified epithermal breccia and decalcified limestone carrying anomalous precious metal values.
Selected rock chip grab sampling shows widespread precious metal mineralisation adjacent to both stocks, with values up to 5.8 g/t Au and 114 g/t Ag (however, the reader is cautioned that these grades are not necessarily representative of the mineralisation hosted on the property). A previous drill hole through the breccia intersected 0.59 g/t Au over 40 ft, including 2 g/t Au over 2 ft.
A large hot springs sinter outcrops approximately 500 m away from the intrusives, with the intervening area covered by alluvium but marked by an intense magnetic low. The magnetic low is thought to define a large area of alteration, and previous geochemical surveys outline high antimony, arsenic, mercury and silver values typical of the geochemical signature of epithermal mineral targets.