The Canadian Malartic mine, Canada's largest operating gold mine (Photo: Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd.)

The Canadian Malartic mine, Canada's largest operating gold mine (Photo: Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd.)

After recently taking over as President at Abitibi Royalties (RZZ:TSXV), Ian Ball announced an odd move this morning; re-releasing previously reported drill results from 2008 on the Malartic CHL property.  The drilling is from the Norrie zone which appears to host bulk-tonnage gold mineralization and was drilled by the former owner, Golden Valley Mines, prior to its spinout into Abitibi Royalties.

Ian Ball, the former president of McEwen Mining and protégé of Goldcorp founder Rob McEwen (Photo: Forbes)

Ian Ball, the former president of McEwen Mining and protégé of Goldcorp founder Rob McEwen (Photo: Forbes)

"Although it is a bit unorthodox to release past results, we thought it was important to draw attention to the Norrie zone, since it seems to have been overlooked during the past 6.5 years with the construction and subsequent optimization of the near-surface resources at the Canadian Malartic mine. However, we believe the overall grades and intercept lengths are comparable to North Odyssey. We are very excited about the upside potential at the Malartic CHL property due to the significant drill intercepts at both North Odyssey/Norrie and the limited deep exploration that has been completed to date," stated Ian Ball.

Drilling at the Norrie zone has returned long widths of good gold grades including: 1.71 g/t gold over 236.2 metres, 1.41 g/t gold over 234.7 metres, 1.86 g/t gold over 120.7 metres and 1.47 g/t gold over 107 metres. The company believes these deep intersections appear to show the presence of a large system of Canadian Malartic-style disseminated gold mineralization.

So far, the mineralized zone has been outlined as having dimensions of 380 metres long, 260 metres wide and roughly 100 metres thick.  The Norrie zone is wedged between the Canadian Malartic mine (Canada's largest gold mine) which is now owned by Yamana and Agnico-Eagle and the Malartic CHL property (which the zone is located).

In the release, the company stated the following reasons for re-reporting these results:

  1. No follow-up drilling by Osisko as the company believes their focus turned to open-pit resources for the Canadian Malartic mill;
  2. Norrie has not been included in any prior resource estimates due to the limited and mainly historical nature of the drilling;
  3. The largely untested deep exploration potential between the Norrie and North Odyssey zones, where a 1,250-metre gap could potentially lead to additional bulk-tonnage discoveries;
  4. The Norrie zone being located just 200 metres southeast of the ultimate Canadian Malartic open pit and near infrastructure.

Read: Abitibi Royalties Highlights the Norrie Zone a Previously Reported Bulk Tonnage Underground Target on the Malartic CHL Property