Galleon Gold watchers anxious for PEA

The play on words is irresistible. Galleon Gold has every oar in the water as the company continues its smooth sailing toward Timmins’ next big orebody.

By Kevin Vincent, Mining Life
The Eric Sprott-backed junior has established an aggressive exploration pattern for itself at the company’s West Cache Project in West Timmins and there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic that Galleon will be the city’s next producer.
Galleon’s West Cache project is 13 kilometers west of Timmins along Highway 101.”We’re butted against Pan American Silver’s West Mine,” explains President and CEO R. David Russell. “We’re on the same type of structures that come out of Timmins and we head to the southwest area.”
The company is working on a 43-101 that’ll be out shortly followed by a PEA, Preliminary Economic Assessment.

“We started about a year and a half ago with 1,079,000 ounces in a global resource base. We started with a database of about 325 core holes, now we’ve added 213 infill holes in between known mineralization for a total of 46,000 meters. We’ve hit the same mineralization they had before, we’ve just expanded on it, and we’ve hit Vein 9. Further to the south, there’s another structure a little bit different mineralogy there, but it holds a lot of gold.”
Galleon has commenced baseline studies and is getting prepared to finish surveying to go to lease on the property for permits, followed by an underground ramp design to do some test mining and bulk mining.
Russell says the location is ideal. “It’s roughly a two-hour flight north of Toronto. And the key is being close, we’re bisected by Highway 101, we have water, power, gas lines, everything through there including access. We’re not a moose pasture where we’ve got to bring in infrastructure. It’s there. We’ve got the airports. We’ve got a mining-friendly environment. We’ve got a skilled workforce - that’s very, very important when you’re starting up a project.”
We have an MOU with the First Nations communities, that’s the Flying Post and Mattagami First Nations, both of which are great working partners on this project.”

Galleon began to accelerate their interest in West Cache about two years ago. Since that time, Russell’s enthusiasm has jumped significantly and so has his predictions on the property’s potential.
“We should have a multi-million-ounce project here as we go. Now the actual footprint is about 3,500 hectares.”
Russell says the company describes the property as a Mesothermal lode gold deposit system in the Abitibi Greenstone belt. “Having the name Abitibi really tells a lot within the system, and we’re right in the core of it here. And very similar to the Hollinger and McIntyre mines which were about 30 million ounces within that area of production and is still in production today with Newmont.”
In presentation after presentation Russell takes investors and interested parties through a comprehensive examination of the company’s drill results in several exciting areas.
“Original drilling explored it and we merged with Xplore and came up with Galleon Gold and the West Cache project. And what we did is we looked at the data they had drilled, they’ve done a great job drilling deeper. Here’s 10-09, 21-23, you’ve got 11 meters, 5 meters, 4 meters, 11 meters, and you look at the grades 5 grams, 8 grams, 39. I looked at that and said okay, we’ve got a winner here, we’ve just got to infill drill, we’d have to be able to model the data, be able to permit this project, take it underground, re-drill on a call space center and start mining.”
Notwithstanding that enthusiasm, there’s lots of work to do. “Before we can start the actual milling process, we’ve got to go through all the environmental studies, what type of mill, what type of tailing spawns and what kind of liners, that sort of thing that we’re going to actually use within this project,” said Russell.  
“We have the west deep, we’ve got the number nine zone, then we have the west pit, the gap, east pit, and east pit expansion. Now all these four areas will be one mega-pit as we develop it.”
The company’s land survey is close to being done. “It’s one of the more complex surveys, because we’ve got highways, gas lines, power lines, things like that and other areas to look at. The permitting activities baseline studies for flora and fauna water hydrology, that sort of thing, we’ve got to develop a closure plan which we’re working on and then the underground ramp design that goes with it. Then there’s a bulk sample and then a closer plan for that bulk sample along with it.”

Russell expects the company’s PEA to be ready by early fall. “In between, we will turn out, very shortly an NI-43, National Instrument 43-101, it actually states what the resource base will be. So, stay tuned in the next few weeks you’ll see that document come out followed by the PEA study. And we’ll have ongoing exploration programs and continue consultations with our First Nations partners.”
Russell isn’t shy about categorizing Galleon as a potential world class operation.  
“What’s a full-scale project?
It could be anywhere from let’s say a project that produces or a throughput of 2,500-3,500 tons per day, open pit grades at 2.5-3.5 grams, underground grades of 6 grams or higher, maybe towards 7 grams, and potentially a production profile, I’m kind of stepping out a little bit here, but it could be 80,000-100,000, maybe 120,000 ounces per year. It just depends on how big the project will be, what will come from the open pit and underground. But all our studies will define that in the PEA study and then go on to pre-feasibility studies that will really lay that out.”
The company has everything in place for a successful journey. “And we’ve also got a proven experience management team, not only geologically, but permitting and people that are from Timmins that know their way around the mining business, what know their way around the ministry, the permitting end of it and they know how to do it right and get this project off the ground.”
Concluding his presentation at the Mining The Abitibi Conference, Russell escalated his predictions on the property’s potential.  
“I think I try to be conservative. And like I said, we started with 1,079,000. So, my expectation is it’s north of that. Maybe you don’t hit the 1,500,000 or 2,000,000 mark, but what I want to tell the investors and listeners is this is a very large project, okay and if you extrapolate, we’re only drilling say 2,000 meters on a 6 kilometer section of ground that we own. This structure has not been proven that it’s cut off on strike and dip. So, when somebody says we’re open on strike, we’re open on dip, we’re literally open on strike and dip here. So, if you can in the 2,000 meters put a million ounces or a million a quarter, anybody can actually do the extrapolation of the numbers and say this is probably a 1,500,000, 2,500,000 type of deposit. So, we have the potential here to add ounces, just advanced programs drilling feasibility work and you’re going to add ounces.”

GALLEON CONTINUES TO ADD OUNCES

Announced on July 13, 2021 with the discovery of a new mineralized area with multiple gold zones at its 100% owned West Cache Gold Project.
The South Area Discovery - multiple gold zones with significant grades and widths
• Located in previously undrilled area 50-250 meters south of Zone #9
• Higher grade intercepts, include:
      o    WC-21-198 with 2.0 m at 14.54 g/t Au
      o    WC-21-192 with 2.0 m at 7.96 g/t Au
      o    WC-21-188 with 1.5 m at 8.90 g/t Au
• Significant thicker intervals, include:
      o    WC-20-077 with 41.5 m at 1.03 g/t Au
      o    WC-21-162 with 10.0 m at 1.28 g/t Au
      o    WC-21-192 with 9.0 m of 2.53 g/t Au
• Mineralization remains open along strike and down dip
• Portions of the South Area display mineralogic profiles that are similar to the Zone #9 and the West Deep area just to the north
• South Area geology, including mineralogy, structure, and host rock characteristics, suggests similar potential for future discovery of new zones even further to the south in unexplored terrain.
Russell comments, “Results from our 2020-21 exploration program have exceeded our expectations. We started with an infill drill program to improve and gain an understanding of the economic potential of the existing mineralization at West Cache and in the process discovered the high-grade Zone #9 shoot. Building on our model for Zone #9 mineral controls, we extended three holes to the south at the end of 2020 and had our first indication that something new and very significant might exist there. We confirmed those early results with a follow-up program in 2021 and made the discovery of the South Area official. It feels like we are just starting to understand the blue-sky potential on this project. I expect as we continue to build on our growing understanding of the mineral controls’ property wide – additional pit and underground targets will emerge.  We are also pleased to report that we have now received all assays needed to complete the modelling of the main mineralized areas on the Project as required for completion of the PEA. Moving forward, the Company has been advised that work over the next 7-8 weeks will be required by P&E Consultants in order to complete the required analysis and write-up to produce preliminary PEA results now due in early September.”

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