Discovery Gold Zone
On May 25, 2016 Balmoral announced that it had entered into a Letter of Intent to sell the Discovery Zone Property, a sub-division of the larger Fenelon Property hosting the Discovery Gold Zone, to Wallbridge Mining Limited. The sale of the Discovery Zone Property is expected to be completed prior to September 25, 2016. The lower map at right shows the Discovery Zone Property relative to the larger Fenelon Property and Balmoral's regional land holdings.
Since initial testing in 1998 over 300 diamond drill holes have been completed on the Fenelon property with approximately 90% of the drilling being confined to the Discovery Zone area. Of that 95% of the holes targeted the Zone at less than 150 metres vertical depth.
Drilling on the Discovery Zone has intersected high-grade gold mineralization for slightly over 300 metres along strike, over an aggregate width of approximately 40 metres and to vertical depth of 150 metres. The Zone remains open to depth and drilling completed in 2006 indicated potential for along strike extensions of the high-grade gold mineralization returning similar high-grade mineralization in isolated drill holes up to 300 metres northwest of the Zone at shallow depths.
A number of historic and NI 43-101 compliant resource estimates have been completed on the Discovery Zone, most recently in 2005 following the last major drill campaign on the property by the previous owners. The majority of these studies have focused on shallow resources above the 100 metre vertical level and all have indicated average gold grades well in excess of the average production grade for the Abitibi. None of these resource estimates are considered current to the Company and the Company is therefore prohibited under Canadian securities regulations from publishing these results including those which are NI43-101 compliant.
Drilling by Balmoral in 2011 confirmed the work by previous property operators and was successful in intersecting the Discovery Zone at a depth of approximately 225 metres, below which it remains open for evaluation.
The Company has not targeted the Discovery Zone area since 2011 while it focused resources on the expansion of the Martiniere gold system to the west and on the more recently discovered H3 Ni-Cu-PGE discovery on the adjacent Grasset Property. Balmoral is currently seeking a partner to further advance the exploration and development of the Discovery Zone.