TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Montreal-based TomaGold has bought a 39.5% interest in the Sidace Lake project from junior Planet Exploration, the company said on Thursday.

In doing so, the company partnered with Goldcorp, which held the remaining 60.5% of the project, located 25 km north-east of Balmertown, in the renowned Red Lake mining camp.

In 2009, a resource estimate was completed on the two most advanced of six prospects on the claims – the Main Discovery Zone (MDZ) and the Upper Duck Zone – using a gold price of $800/oz. The technical report had calculated an indicated resource of 1.37-million tonnes grading 3.21 g/t gold, containing 141 300 oz of gold.

The inferred resource stood at 2.1-million tonnes grading 3.24 g/t and containing 218 800 oz of gold. The estimate applied a 1.5 g/t cut-off grade and a 35 g/t gold high-grade cap. The mineralisation remained open along strike and at depth, the company stated.

TomaGold president and CEO David Grondin noted that the property was located close to mining and milling infrastructure and qualified personnel in the Red Lake mining camp. “This is simply a great addition to our growing portfolio of advanced gold mining projects in Canada, which includes the Monster Lake and Obalski projects,” he commented.

TomaGold advised that the MDZ had similar characteristics to Barrick Gold’s Hemlo gold deposit, located about 350 km east of Thunder Bay, Ontario, which had current proven and probable reserves of 917 000 oz of gold.

The similarities included a deformed porphyry system expressed as a quartz-sericite schist with disrupted quartz veinlets and associated molybdenite, arsenides and iron sulphides; rocks on the structural footwall (FW) displaying intense microcline alteration; a main gold-bearing horizon that was positioned between the potassic alteration (microcline) zone on the FW and a massive quartz unit, interpreted as a meta-chert on the hanging wall; and evidence of high-temperature and high-pressure metamorphic environments (amphibolite facies).