EGR planning winter drill program at Detour West – Richard Mills

2024.11.06

EGR Exploration (TSXV:EGR) is receiving grant funding up to $200,000 to explore its Detour West property.

The funding is through the Ontario Junior Exploration Program (OJEP) from the provincial government. It covers 50% of exploration costs to a maximum of $200,000. That means if EGR raises $400,000, OJEP will pay for $200,000; in other words, through OJEP, EGR is exploring Detour West for 50 cents on the dollar. 

The grant will be used to fund a till and top-of-bedrock Reverse Circulation (RC) drill program to test the western extension of the Detour-Fenelon trend onto the Detour West property. EGR has drill hole fences permitted along two east-west structures interpreted from the high-resolution airborne magnetic survey completed in 2023.

“I am thankful for the province of Ontario continuing to run the OJEP program. It is a great way for exploration companies to receive meaningful support to advance early-stage projects. This will be extremely helpful in advancing the Detour West project,” said Daniel Rodriguez, EGR Exploration’s CEO, in the Nov. 1 news release.

Detour West

EGR’s flagship Detour West property is about 300 km north of Timmins. It covers 34,681 hectares (35 km long by 12 km wide) of the Abitibi Greenstone Belt, one of the most prospective regions for gold on the planet. Many gold deposits found in the Abitibi region are considered world-class; the average gold deposit grade here is higher than the global average.

The Abitibi hosts several key players in the gold mining and exploration space, including Agnico Eagle Mines and Newmont Mining, the world’s leading gold miner.

The consolidated Agnico portfolio includes Detour Lake, which has a mine life of approximately 22 years with expected average gold production of 659,000 ounces per year.

Newmont maintains a significant presence in this prolific greenstone belt with three projects: Éléonore, Porcupine and Musselwhite.

Located in the northern part of the Abitibi, the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend spans over 200 km of prospective strike length potential along the Sunday Lake and Lower Detour deformation zones. EGR’s property is located 20 km west of Agnico Eagle’s (TSX:AEM) Detour Lake open-pit mine (hence the name “Detour West”), and also directly adjoins Agnico’s holdings along the trend.

EGR carried out an airborne magnetic survey covering approximately two-thirds of the property to investigate the extensions of various deformation zones known to be associated with gold mineralization along the Detour-Fenelon trend.

Gold mineralization is associated with the structural contact between mafic and ultramafic volcanic rocks of the Deloro Assemblage and younger Caopatina Assemblage sediments. This structural contact is a regional-scale thrust zone, the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone (SLDZ).

A key task for EGR, as it goes about exploring Detour West, is testing the extension of the SLDZ, trying to prove that Detour West is on trend with Agnico-Eagle’s Detour Lake mine and its 19.92Moz of reserves.

A regional geology map from Agnico Eagle shows three deformation zones running east-west, right to the eastern edge of Agnico’s Detour Lake property. The deformation zones are labeled Sunday Lake, Massicote and Lower Detour.

Gold mineralization is associated with structural contact on the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone (SLDZ). The SLDZ runs through the Detour Lake mine’s Main Pit, West Pit, and the West Pit Extension.

If the Detour Lake – Regional Geology Map is correct in its interpretation, it would mean that, rather than ending abruptly at the western edge of the Detour Lake property, the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone, and potentially the other two deformation zones, Massicote and Lower Detour, might continue in a westerly direction, possibly right onto EGR’s Detour West.

The red box on the map below shows EGR’s Detour West property; it’s just west of the Detour Lake open pit, which used to be operated by Kirkland Lake Gold but is now merged with Agnico Eagle. While the property looks small on the map, it’s actually large — 35 km long by 12 km wide. As explained above, there are three deformation zones running east-west, right to the edge of Agnico’s Detour Lake property, possibly extending onto EGR’s Detour West.

Taking a closer look at the map below, notice the shaded-gray east-west trending feature, that is the zone — actually a collection of zones — of faulting and mineral deposition. The red dots are gold deposits.

The Pinch

What makes EGR’s ground depicted in yellow so intriguing?

According to respected geologist Quinton Hennigh, it’s when deformation belts like the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone become constricted, squeezed or pinched. The map shows a narrowing of the gray, snake-shaped band at the east end, and a similar narrowing at the west end.

“One of the things I like to see is where you get into these deformational belts you see them become constricted or compacted,” Hennigh said in a 2021 video presentation. “There’s a lot of granites that were coming up out of the ground at the time of this deformation and they start to squeeze the rocks around them called greenstones and when they do that you can get higher grades.”

“As you go westward, Detour Lake is where the structural zone is wider and in those areas you can still form gold deposits, but they tend to be bigger, low-grade deposits and that’s exactly what Detour is, but guess what? As we go further west over onto [EGR]’s ground, notice that deformational zone starts to grow skinnier and skinnier, tighter and tighter. What that tells me is that there’s good potential for high-grade discovery in that region.”

EGR’s exploration plan is simple: replicate the same methods that have been successful for Agnico Eagle at the Detour Lake mine. The company wants to test the extension of the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone, trying to prove that Detour West is on trend with Agnico Eagle’s Detour Lake mine and its 19.92Moz of reserves.

An airborne magnetic survey has been flown on the property, located 20 km west of the Detour Lake pit. That survey, plus historical data, a Lidar interpretation, and limited outcrop prospecting, indicate there are possible gold-bearing structures running onto Detour West.

The next step is to drill it.

RC drill program

At this point EGR doesn’t have the $400,000 in its treasury, meaning it will have to go to the market to raise funds. In a phone conversation Monday, Rodriguez told me he’s looking at a private placement with half a warrant. The buy-in price has yet to be determined.

The company is currently talking to operators, figuring out the timing and seeing when it can start the program.

Rodriguez estimates he can do the entire program for $420,000, including building trails, housing employees in Cochrane, paying geologists and generating reports. Remember, $200,000 of that will be paid for by the Ontario Junior Exploration Program.

The RC drill program envisions 25 holes and the priority target is the “pinch” identified by Quinton Hennigh.

The RC drill rig punches holes through the glacial till and into the bedrock up to a maximum of 5 meters. Rodriguez said they’re only interested in the bottom few feet of till, and, if gold is present in the till, on or just above bedrock, about 2m (6.5 feet) into the bedrock.

If the field team notices gold in till higher up it means the glacier scoured an outcrop and lifted the gold towards the surface. In that case, the crew will move “up ice” and try to find the bedrock source – where the gold in till meets the bedrock.

In general the crew is searching for “pristine, rough gold.”

‘If it’s super rounded it means it’s pretty far away. If it’s rough and still jagged it means it’s close by,” Rodriguez explained. “You try to find fans of that and you know you’re getting close to the source.”

If EGR starts finding clusters of gold, or greenstone rocks, it means they’re even more “in the neighborhood”. If the finds match up with the magnetic and VTEM surveys, the next step would likely be a diamond drill hole. EGR would probably vector into the mineralization guided by previous holes drilled by Wallbridge and Agnico Eagle. 

We’ve done our homework and prepared for the dance, let’s see what’s there,” Rodriguez said.

EGR Exploration Ltd.
TSXV:EGR
Cdn$0.04, 2024.11.04
Shares Outstanding 40.2m
Market cap Cdn$1.6m
EGR website

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Richard (Rick) Mills
aheadoftheherd.com
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Richard does does not own shares of EGR Exploration Ltd. (TSXV:EGR). EGR is a paid advertiser on his site aheadoftheherd.com

This article is issued on behalf of EGR