TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Alaska-focused gold explorer Freegold Ventures has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources’ Office of Project Management and Permitting to engage the state's large-mine permitting team (LMPT) as a logical step to move the Golden Summit project forward.

The LMPT offers multidisciplinary expertise and is involved from the pre-permitting to post-closure stages of mines.

Freegold said it was now moving into the preliminary economic assessment (PEA) stage of evaluating the project and that it had issued requests for proposals to various engineering companies to undertake the PEA. The company expected to award the PEA contract in the near term, with the aim of having the study completed during 2014.

The Golden Summit project currently hosts an National Instrument (NI) 43-101-compliant indicated resource of 79.8-million tonnes averaging 0.66 g/t of gold for 1.68-million ounces, and an inferred resource of 248.06-million tonnes averaging 0.61 g/t of gold for 4.84-million ounces, using 0.3 g/t as a possible openpit cutoff.

The technical report completed in June, also included an oxide component for the overall resource, comprising 25.03-million tonnes averaging 0.55 g/t of gold for 439 000 oz in the indicated category, and 16.62-million tonnes averaging 0.47 g/t for 253 000 oz in the inferred category, using a 0.2 g/t cutoff.

The oxide cap was contained largely within the upper 60 m of the resource. Resource drilling had been confined to a 300 m x 1.5 km area; however, the entire Golden Summit project area covered a 5 261 ha area and was host to several other significant exploration targets with the potential to host additional resources, all of which have an oxide cap in the upper 60 m.

Freegold said preliminary bottle-roll tests on the oxide material had indicated recoveries in excess of 85% in 24 hours. An extensive metallurgical programme was currently under way.

Since drilling began on the Dolphin/Cleary resource area of the project in 2011, Freegold had lifted the resource by 867% in the indicated category and 820% in the inferred category.

Freegold also holds a 100% lease interest in the Rob gold project, near Sumitomo Metal Mining's Pogo gold mine in the Goodpaster mining district of Alaska, and has an exploration agreement with option to lease the Vinasale gold project in central Alaska, which hosted an indicated NI 43-101 resource of 3.41-million tonnes averaging 1.48 g/t of gold for 162 000 oz of gold, and an inferred resource of 53.25-million tonnes averaging 1.05 g/t of gold for 1.8-million ounces of gold, using a cutoff value of 0.5 g/t as a possible openpit cutoff.