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Logan Resources sets the drillbit turning on Nevada gold project

Published: 12:20 27 Oct 2016 BST

Gold_Bars
Logan's ground is situated in one of the world's most prolific gold-producing regions

Late in August shares in Logan Resources Ltd (CVE:LGR) jumped to a four-year high.

That rise, to C$0.235, came as Logan announced a tie-in with Pilot Gold (TSE:PLG) on several gold properties in the South West of the USA.

Pilot already has a track record of discovery, and in an area Logan chief executive Mark Morabito is already very familiar with.

He’s been chairman of Excelsior Mining (CVE:MIN) for some years now, steering the ship as Excelsior moves its multi-billion pound Gunnison copper project in south east Arizona through the final stages of feasibility.

“That’s allowed me to learn a lot about the attitudes to mining in the South West of the USA. I’m a big believer in not exploring in places where there’s a hostile attitude to mining. But in Nevada and Arizona you can get things done.”

Indeed, these two states host some of the most famous mining districts in the world. The suite of assets that’s coming into Logan from Pilot lies south and west of the Carlin Trend, which in its time has produced over 70 million ounces of gold from various mines.

So, an auspicious part of the world in which to go exploring, and one which Morabito has deliberately targeted.

“We’d been hunting around here at King & Bay West, which is the merchant bank that I own,” says Morabito.

“We’d been looking for the next big opportunity and we got talking to Pilot Gold. They had advanced exploration projects and I knew that the team of geologists at Pilot are second to none. So when we got to look at these projects we liked what we saw. We struck a deal to option a whole suite of nine projects from them.”

Under the terms of the deal, Logan may earn up to an 80% interest in four of the nine properties by meeting a series of staged milestones, including an initial exploration spend of US$1 mln within 12 months.

This spend is already underway, as Logna has now set the drill rigs turning at the Brik property.

“It looks very promising,” says Morabito. “We like this property and it’s our first focus. In spring or late winter, we’ll then move on to our next project, which is Drum.”

At Brik, 2,000 metres of drilling will be undertaken immediately, while at Drum the scope and scale of the drilling has yet to be determined.

It would be safe to say though, that of the nine properties, Logan is targeting the two which look the most prospective in terms of the data inherited from Pilot.

“The Brik and Drum projects have had a fair amount of work on them,” says Morabito. “We have a target at Brik called Hidden Treasure which looks very promising. Of course the drillbit is what determines the answers at the end of the day, but we expect to confirm the past Pilot results and expand on them. There is nothing too complicated here. It’s pretty vanilla stuff. It’s adventure and exploration at its finest.”

It’s in this context that the sharp jump in Logan’s shares came in August. The market was suddenly reminded that the company was alive and active, and that following a funding that was completed on 3 August, it had the money to put its plans into effect.

That’s what’s happening now, and the newsflow over the coming weeks and months should make for very interesting reading.

 

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