Highlights of the Aureus East gold MRE include: Combined Indicated Mineral Resources of 162,700 oz Au, including; o 78,000 oz Au pit constrained Indicated Mineral Resource and o 84,700 oz Au underground constrained Indicated Mineral Resource.
Combined Inferred Mineral Resources of 387,600 oz Au, including; 147,200 oz Au pit constrained Inferred Mineral Resource and o 240,400 oz Au underground constrained Inferred Mineral Resource.
Tremendous exploration potential remains: o Multiple zones north and south of the axis of the deposit o Zones extend from surface, open at depth Potential for surface extraction and near surface resource growth
Majority of drilling is less than 500m depth and constrained to western portion of the deposit
Mineral resource estimate de-risks the
Aurelius CEO,
'This MRE represents an exciting milestone for the
Outlook
The MRE represents an important building block in delivering on the Company's 'Define/Refine/Re-Engineer' value creation strategy, as it demonstrates management's successful interpretation of the deposit. The robustness of the MRE provides both an increased understanding and flexibility to the management team, as it further evaluates pathways to enhanced value creation at Aureus East, whether leveraging existing mill infrastructure and assets or focusing on a potential hub and spoke model collaboration with other operations.
Aurelius now has four distinct mineral resource estimates in
Next Steps
The Company intends to build on the success of the MRE by focusing the next phases of drilling on high grade target zones (i.e., Zone 4 - 944 Level channel sampling) in an effort to increase the resource estimate in the near term and advance the project towards a PEA. Aureus East remains open at depth and most of the drilling to date has focused on the first 500m of strike from the western limit of the deposit. As a result, most of the deposit is underexplored at this stage. The zones identified so far appear to continue for at least 1,600m, representing a strong opportunity to follow them to the east and at depth.
The Company's Aureus West deposit is located approximately 800m south of Aureus East and is interpreted to be its offset along a regional fault line.
The MRE for Aureus East ('Project') was completed in accordance with National Instrument 43-101 ('NI 43-101') standards for disclosure and the CIM Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves (
A technical report is being prepared in accordance with NI-43-101 and will be available on the Company's website and SEDAR within 45 days of the effective date of the MRE. The MRE includes both pit constrained and underground constrained resources. The total combined resources include an Indicated mineral resource of 0.985 million tonnes ('Mt') grading 5.14 grams/tonne ('g/t') Au (162.7 koz Au contained) and an Inferred mineral resource of 4.185 Mt grading 2.88 g/t Au (387.6 koz Au contained).
Mineral resources were prepared in accordance with the CIM Definition Standards for Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves (MRMR) (2014) and CIM MRMR Best Practice Guidelines (2019).
Mineral resources may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, sociopolitical, marketing, or other relevant issues.
Mineral resources are not mineral reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability.
Mineral resource tonnages are rounded to the nearest 1,000.
Density was determined from measurements on 245 drill core samples. The density of background sediments was determined to be 2.72 t/m3; the density of the mineralized zones was determined to be 2.77 t/m3.
Au g/t deposit grade was estimated using Inverse Distance Squared methods based on 1 m downhole assay composites. Capping was applied variably to each wireframe based on the distribution of assays; of the 39,831 assays, 243 were capped (0.6%). This was implemented to prevent the overestimation of grade. The parent model block size used was 2 m (x) by 2 m (y) by 2 m (z) with minimum sub-celling of 0.67 m (x) by 0.67 m (y) by variable (z). The model was regularized to 2 m (x) by 2 m (y) by 4 m (z) for pit optimization.
Pit constrained mineral resources were defined within an optimized pit shell with average pit slope angles of 45-degree in rock and 25-degree in overburden, and a 13.1 strip ratio (waste material: mineralized material).
Pit optimization parameters include: metal pricing at
Pit constrained mineral resources are reported at a cut-off grade of 0.44 g/t Au within the 100% revenue factor optimized pit shell. The cut-off grade reflects the marginal cut-off grade used in pit optimization to define reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction by open pit methods. Pit constrained mineral resources are reported from the model regularized to 2 m (x) by 2 m (y) by 4 m (z) to include must take blocks.
Underground minable shape optimization parameters include: metal pricing at
Underground constrained mineral resources are reported at a cut-off grade of 2.40 g/t Au. The cut-off grade reflects total operating costs to define reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction by conventional underground mining methods. All material within minable shape optimization wireframes has been included in the mineral resource to include must take blocks.
Geology and Mineralization
The Aureus East deposit lies within the Meguma Terrane, the most southerly zone of the Canadian Appalachian province. The Meguma is historically associated with gold mineralization and mining in
The Aureus East deposit lies within an anticline hosted by the Goldenville Formation. The deposit occurs in a series of tight chevron-style fold-hosted quartz 'saddles'. The hinge zone of the fold is typically a rounded arc-shaped structure of 5-10m and the 'limbs' are typically more uniform and straight. These quartz horizons occur parallel to stratigraphy which consists of interbedded greywacke and argillite sequences. The deposit is regionally offset by the Harrigan Cove Fault on the Western margin, which has approximately 1.5km of strike-slip offset, and unknown (but significant) dip-slip displacement. The deposit itself also has lesser internal offsets (on the scale of 5-20m) with sinistral, east-side-down displacement. Four such faults have been incorporated into the resource model.
Gold mineralization is associated with the quartz saddles and limbs but is not restricted to only the quartz veins. In addition, numerous generations of quartz exist at the deposit, including parallel to the offset faulting as well as parallel to the fold compression (cleavage), which can also host gold mineralization. Resource modelling was domained through 230 wireframes designed to represent the quartz saddle/limb horizons hosting gold mineralization. These wireframes were separated into five fault blocks as dictated by the four offsetting faults within the deposit. Each wireframe was estimated individually. In addition, background wireframes were created for each fault block, which fully encompassed all mineralization wireframes within the fault block and were clipped to overburden and topography. An estimation was run on the background mineralization, that is, all the gold mineralization which was not able to be attributed to a mineralization wireframe. Wireframes which did not contain enough composites to be estimated, were returned to the background for estimation.
COVID-19 Precautions
Aurelius has developed and implemented compliant precautions and procedures that are in line with guidelines for the Province of
About Aurelius
Aurelius is a well-positioned gold exploration company focused on advancing its recently acquired and renamed
Aurelius is also advancing two district-scale gold projects in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt in
The Company's management team is experienced in all facets of the mineral exploration and mining industry, and will be considering additional acquisitions of advanced staged opportunities in
Contact:
Tel: (416) 304-9095
Email: info@aureliusminerals.com
Web: www.aureliusminerals.com
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information
This news release contains 'forward-looking information' under the provisions of applicable Canadian securities legislation, concerning the business, operations and financial performance and condition of Aurelius. All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are 'forward-looking information' with respect to Aurelius within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including statements with respect to the Company's planned drilling and exploration activities, the anticipated benefits of the Acquisition and the development of the
Certain important factors that could cause actual results, performances or achievements to differ materially from those in the forward-looking information include, among others, gold price volatility, mining operational and development risks, litigation risks, regulatory restrictions (including environmental regulatory restrictions and liability), changes in national and local government legislation, taxation, controls or regulations and/or change in the administration of laws, policies and practices, expropriation or nationalization of property and political or economic developments in
The Company provides forward-looking information for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other important factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements of Aurelius to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to: risks related to difficulties in executing exploration programs at the Mikwam,
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