LONDON (Alliance News) - Sunrise Resources PLC Tuesday said deeper drilling will be required to access the best sections of gold at the Newark gold project in the US after the miner evaluated historic exploration work that was carried out by one of the largest miners in the world.
Sunrise shares were trading up 16% to 0.238 pence per share on Tuesday morning.
Sunrise submitted mining claims over the Newark project in Nevada earlier this year and has started work by evaluating the previous exploration work in the area by Freeport-McMoRan in the 1980s.
Freeport is among the world's largest publicly traded copper producers, the world's largest producer of molybdenum, and a significant gold, oil and natural gas producer.
Sunrise is targeting Carlin-style gold mineralisation at the project, including areas that host "some of the largest gold deposits in the world". Carlin-style deposits are only found in a small number of linear belts and are highly sought because they often hold other materials like arsenic, antimony, thallium, barium and mercury.
Nevada is known for its natural resources, mainly for oil recently following the rise in shale gas in the country, and the area produced around 5.0 million ounces of gold back in 2014. The Newark project lies favourably at the intersection of the Alligator Ridge and Battle Mountain-Eureka gold trends.
Sunrise said the work carried out by Freeport included surface sampling that returned anomalous gold with high values of Carlin-style geochemical indicators showing signs of arsenic, antimony, thallium and barium.
Freeport drilled a total of 16 holes on the asset between 1986 and 1987, but a number of those holes failed to reach their target depth. One hole managed to return an intersection of 47.0 metres containing 0.14 parts per million gold from 75.0 metres to the end of the hole at 122.0 metres depth.
As a result, Sunrise said deeper drilling is required to test the favourable target horizons but confirmed that its own reconnaissance surface samples have confirmed the prospective geochemistry at Newark.
"This project contains all of the geochemical and structural ingredients for the occurrence of Carlin-style mineralisation and is a valuable addition to our Westgold precious metal portfolio," said Executive Chairman Patrick Cheetham.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
Copyright 2016 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved.
Sunrise Res (SRES)