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REGIONAL NEWS - EXPLORATION ROUNDUP 24 E&MJ; • JULY 2017 www.e-mj.com Marathon Gold Plans 60,000-m Drill Program at Valentine Lake Marathon Gold has announced explo- ration and development plans for its Valentine Lake Gold Camp property in central Newfoundland that include a 60,000-meter (m) drill program focused primarily on the Marathon deposit. Three drills are on site, with a fourth to be add- ed in the third quarter of 2017. The com- pany is also prospecting a 7-km 2 area to the northeast of the Victory deposit on the property, where historical gold showings warrant additional work. Marathon planning also includes ad- vanced environmental studies for future mine permitting and additional metallur- gical work to optimize recoveries for con- ventional milling and heap leaching. Marathon recently closed bought-deal financing that generated gross proceeds of $18.6 million. The net proceeds are being used to support Valentine Lake develop- ment, where the company has increased staff and expanded camp facilities. A property-wide resource update is planned for the third quarter of 2017, to be followed by a preliminary economic as- sessment in the fourth quarter. Marathon President and CEO Phillip Walford said, "This is going to be a very busy year for us as we look to significantly expand the property-wide resource." The Valentine Lake property currently hosts four near-surface, mainly pit-shell constrained, measured and indicated gold resources totaling 1.4 million ounc- es (oz) at 1.91 grams (g) per metric ton (mt) of gold and inferred resources total- ing 766,500 oz at 2.24 g/mt gold. These resources are open along strike and at depth and cover less than 10% of the total length of the highly prospective Val- entine Lake thrust fault and associated splay faults that host the majority of the gold mineralization within the property. (www.marathon-gold.com) Exploration Briefs Debmarine Namibia has launched the world's largest and most advanced dia- mond exploration vessel, the mv SS Nu- joma, to explore for diamond deposits on the ocean floor offshore from Namibia. The 12,000-mt, diesel-electric-powered vessel is 113 m long, can accommodate a crew of 80, and has a helicopter deck suitable for Sikorsky S61s. It was con- structed in Ulsteinvik, Norway, and fitted with its subsea sampling system, de- signed by De Beers Group, in Cape Town, South Africa. Capital cost to build the vessel came in at $157 million. Debmarine Namibia is a 50/50 joint venture between the government of Na- mibia and De Beers Group. It is the only company in the world currently mining diamonds from the ocean floor. In 2016, the company produced 1.2 million carats, operating a fleet of five mining vessels that mine diamonds at depths of 120 m to 140 m below the ocean surface. The mv SS Nujoma is capable of sam- pling at more than double the speed of its predecessor. It incorporates a range of unique technologies that allow it to take larger samples and collect more informa- tion per sample than any other diamond sampling vessel. (www.debeersgroup.com) Seabridge Gold has acquired a 100% in- terest in the Snowstorm gold project in northern Nevada from PFR Gold Holdings. The project consists of 31 mi 2 of land strategically located at the projected in- tersection of the Carlin trend, the Getchell trend and the Northern Nevada rift zone. The property includes 700 mining claims and 5,800 acres of fee lands as- sembled by a private company over a 15- year period and explored over the past 10 years. Seabridge has staked an additional 260 claims totaling 5,200 acres that are contiguous to the purchased claims. The acquisition includes an extensive data package generated by previous op- erators. Although potential targets are hidden under Tertiary cover, the data sup- port the project's exploration potential. Geological and geochemical evaluations have documented hydrothermal alteration zones consistent with large northern Ne- vada deposit types. Limited drilling has demonstrated that some of the target ar- eas are at a depth amenable to surface exploration and resource delineation. "Seabridge has been an industry lead- er in finding additional gold resources over the past decade," said Seabridge Chair- man and CEO Rudi Fronk. "For some time now, we have been looking for a large- scale asset in Nevada, which remains one of the world's best environments for find- ing large gold deposits. The Snowstorm acquisition accomplishes this objective." (seabridgegold.net) Mirasol Resources has signed a defini- tive option agreement with OceanaGold to explore Mirasol's La Curva gold project in Santa Cruz province, Argentina. The agreement grants Oceana the option to acquire up to a 75% interest in the proj- ect in five stages. Stage 1 calls for exploration spending of $7 million over a four-year period, in- cluding a first-year commitment of $1.25 million. Stages 2 through 5 are a pre- liminary economic assessment, a feasibil- ity study, a decision to mine and produc- tion financing. Mirasol will serve as project operator for the first year. Oceana may elect to serve as operator thereafter or request that Mirasol continue as operator. La Curva is located at low elevation in an area with favorable infrastructure. Mirasol has outlined three prospects, Cer- ro Chato, Loma Arthur and Southwest, situated along a 6-km-long gold trend. At Cerro Chato, vein samples have re- turned up to 8.69 g/mt of gold and brec- cia samples have returned up to 2.19 g/ mt of gold associated with a large, buried chargeable resistive geophysical anomaly. At Loma Arthur, sampling of bonan- za-grade, less than 1-m-wide, epithermal veins has returned assays of up to 66.8 g/ mt of gold associated with a buried geo- physical anomaly, possibly a flow dome. At Southwest, a 1.3-km-long epither- mal veinlet deflation zone associated with strong geophysical anomalies has returned rock chip samples from outcropping vein- lets with assays of up to 5.97 g/mt of gold. Mirasol and Oceana are currently op- timizing the drill program design for the initial drill testing of the prospects. (www.mirasolresources.com)