StrikePoint Gold Inc. (SKP:TSX.V; STKXF:OTCQB) has announced its 2023 exploration plans for its 100%-owned Cuprite gold project in Nevada's Walker Lane gold trend.
The company will start with geochemical, geophysical, and structural vectoring at the site, techniques that led to the discovery of AngloGold Ashanti Ltd.'s (AU:NYSE; ANG:JSE; AGG:ASX; AGD:LSE) Silicon gold project 75 kilometers away, where a maiden resource of 3.4 million ounces gold (Moz Au) has been defined.
StrikePoint believes Cuprite is an analog to Silicon and plans to follow up the surface work with 2,000 meters of drilling in the second half of 2023.
"The similarities between Silicon and Cuprite are striking," StrikePoint President and Chief Executive Officer Michael Allen said.
Cuprite consists of about 574 unpatented claims covering 44 square kilometers about 15 kilometers south of Goldfield, Nev., and 75 kilometers northwest of Beatty, within the Walker Lane Trend.
At the time of the acquisition, the company's share price was CA$0.07. Technical analyst Clive Maund told Streetwise Reports that "we shouldn't expect any fireworks soon," but StrikePoint looked like a good value.
It's a district-scale opportunity with more than 20 square kilometers of advanced argillic alteration visible at surface, constituting one of the largest steam-heated cells in the trend, the company said.
StrikePoint said it has begun the permitting process for drilling at the project. But Allen said his army of geologists and contractors are mobilizing at the site starting next week. Their work will help the company decide the right places to drill. It will get a drilling contractor lined up after the permits come in.
"We hope to be able to start announcing (drilling) results in 2024," Allen said.
The Catalyst: Cuprite Is 'Everything That You Want'
Allen said one of the things that makes the project so exiting is the fact that exploration work hasn't been done there.
"It's a huge alteration system," Allen told Streetwise Reports. "It's right by the highway. It's everything that you want."
StrikePoint filed a National Instrument 43-101 report for Cuprite in April, after acquiring a 100% interest in in the project from Orogen Royalties Inc. (OGN:TSX.V) in January.
At the time of the acquisition, the company's share price was CA$0.07. Technical analyst Clive Maund told Streetwise Reports that "we shouldn't expect any fireworks soon," but StrikePoint looked like a good value.
"It is down in a zone of strong support and oversold," Maund said.
The stock has sunk as low as CA$0.045 since then but was at CA$0.065 on Tuesday.
The project is underlain by Miocene and Oligocene tuff and is located on the western flank of the Stonewall Mountain Caldera. Several nearby gold deposits and mines are in similar locations within calderas of the Walker Lane Trend, including the Goldfield District Deposit, now owned by Centerra Gold Inc. (CG:TSX; CADGF:OTCPK)
"The Cuprite property includes areas of intense, steam-heated, advanced-argillic alteration with potential for gold-silver mineralization at depth, and the author believes that the Cuprite project is an initial-stage project of merit," geologist Steven I. Weiss wrote in the NI 43-101 report.
World-Class Neighbors
According to Orogen, Cuprite is one of the largest alteration cells in the Walker Lane trend, and prospective feeder structures are untested by historical drilling.
"The Cuprite property surrounds and overlaps a large area of steam-heated advanced-argillic alteration in the eastern portion of the Cuprite district," Weiss wrote. "This alteration zone is exposed for a minimum of 4.8 (kilometers) north-south, by about 2.2 (kilometers) in an east-west direction."
The Walker Lane belt itself is "a broad, northwest-southeast oriented zone of strike-slip and trans-tensional deformation between the Sierra Nevada and Basin and Range geologic provinces of Nevada and California," he wrote.
According to Orogen, Cuprite is one of the largest alteration cells in the Walker Lane trend, and prospective feeder structures are untested by historical drilling.
In the last year, AngloGold Ashanti also acquired Corvus Gold Inc. for US$370 million and the Sterling Project (formerly owned by Northern Empire, which was headed by StrikePoint Gold's CEO) from Coeur Mining Inc. (CDE:NYSE)) for up to US$200 million.
"These transactions highlight the conviction that world-class mining companies have of the prospectivity of the Walker Lane in the vicinity of the Cuprite project," Allen said.
In Canada, a Historic National Instrument 43-101 technical report estimated StrikePoint's Porter project in British Columbia has 11 Moz silver (Ag) at a grade of 868 grams per tonne (g/t) and inferred resources of 1.7 Moz Ag at a grade of 595 g/t.
Streetwise Ownership Overview*
StrikePoint Gold Inc. (SKP:TSX.V; STKXF:OTCQB)
StrikePoint acquired Willoughby, which is about 6 kilometers east of Ascot Resources Ltd.'s Red Mountain, in 2019 for US$85,000. The company said it had found a massive new sulfide mineralization that was previously under ice at the project.
Ownership and Share Structure
Some of the industry's biggest players are shareholders in StrikePoint, including Eric Sprott, who owns about 14.5%. Institutions own about 46.7% of the company, management and insiders own about 4.8%, and 33.9% is retail.
Some major institutional investors include Crescat Capital LLC, with 4.99% or 10.67 million shares, and U.S. Global Investors Inc., with 1.29% or 2.75 million shares.
Major insider shareholders include Board Executive Chairman and Director Shawn Khunkhun with 0.56% or 1.17 million shares, and Director Ian Harris with 0.29% or 0.61 million shares.
StrikePoint's market cap is CA$13.9 million, with 213.78 million shares outstanding, according to the company. It trades in a 52-week range of CA$0.12 and CA$0.045.
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