Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (OMM:TSX.V; OMMSF:OTCMKTS) has staked 101.7 sq. kilometers of additional claims around its flagship Wingdam underground paleoplacer gold project in British Columbia’s Cariboo mining district, about 50 km east of Quesnel.
Some of the new claims border those held by Barkerville Gold Mines, a subsidiary of Osisko Development Corp. (ODV:TSX.V), which has defined a 3.2-million ounce (3.2-Moz) measured and indicated gold resource (and another 2.7 Moz in the inferred category) at its Cariboo Gold Project, east of Wingdam.
“The one piece of land in the middle is one that we've been salivating over. And we were fortunate enough to pick it up when somebody wasn't looking,” Omineca President and CEO Tom MacNeill told Streetwise Reports. “We know things other people don't because we've been exploring in the area.”
The freshly staked claims extend Omineca’s property along the Quesnella Terrane, a geological trend running northwest and southeast of Wingdam. It hosts the prolific gold-copper porphyry belt that includes Mt. Polly and Mt. Milligan copper-gold mines and the Omineca/Canalaska Mouse Mountain joint-venture project.
Once the snow melts, Omineca plans to drill as much as 10,000 meters in 2022 on three separate targets: Mary Creek, roughly seven kilometers northwest of Wingdam; and Skopos, about 1 kilometer south; as well as at the Road Cut Gossan target, which was found when a logging road was built nearby.
The company must rely on geophysics to determine its drill targets because there are few outcrops at surface.
Most of the area is covered in between 5 to 20 meters of overburden (till, sand, dirt and dense forests and growth) and it is expensive to drill in British Columbia’s mountains.
Omineca uses two forms of ground-based geophysics to determine its drill targets. One is known as Induced Polarization, which “charges” the ground to find magnetic anomalies that often contain metal, and the other is Mobile Metal Ion (MMI) technology, which measures metal ions that travel upward from mineralization to loose material at the surface.
The Skopos target is where MacNeill hopes to find the lode gold source of the Wingdam paleoplacer deposit. The gold there, deposited millions of years ago, shows little sign of wear. That means it was carried over a short distance by fast moving water.
MacNeill says data from geophysics conducted to date suggest that the soil geochemistry and anomalies near Skopos look similar to the anomalies and geochemical signatures found at Mary Creek, which is also upstream from a former placer gold mining operation.
The company has sufficient funds to complete its exploration program this year and any gold recovered from Wingdam could benefit future exploration programs beyond 2022.
Its joint-venture partner, Saskatchewan-based Lightning Creek Mining, has experienced unforeseen delays that have prevented the private company from getting into production to this point. Some of these include weather, supply chain problems and labor shortages due to COVID.
The two companies will divide any recovered gold in a 50-50 split, with Lighting Creek taking an additional CA$850/oz to cover mining costs on Omineca’s share. At a gold price of CA$2,300/oz, Omineca hopes to clear about C$1,400/oz.
“As soon as they start recovering gold and giving it to us, we'll yell it from the treetops,” MacNeill told Streetwise Reports.
in late December, Omineca closed a non-brokered private placement by selling 6.25 million flow-through units at CA$0.16 apiece for CA$1M. Each unit consisted of a flow-through common share and one half of one non-flow-through common share purchase warrant, each whole warrant exercisable at $0.24 for 24 months. These warrants can be force exercised if Omineca shares trade above CA$0.30 for five straight days.
49 North Resources is among Omineca’s largest shareholders.
Fully diluted Omineca has 163.6 million shares outstanding.
