Northern Superior Resources Inc. [SUP-TSXV; NSUPF-OTCQB; D9M1-FRA] said Wednesday November 27 that it has resumed control over its 100%-owned TPK gold-silver-copper property located approximately 470 km northeast of Thunder Bay, northwestern Ontario. The move comes after Yamana Gold Inc. [YRI-TSX; AUY-NYSE] elected not to continue its earn-in option.
Northern Superior shares reacted by falling 4.5% or $0.005 to 10.5 cents. The shares are currently trading in a 52-week range of 9.5 cents and 40 cents.
Northern Superior previously granted Yamana an option to earn a 70% interest in the TPK property. To exercise the option, Yamana needed to spend $10 million on the property, make $1 million in cash payments to Northern Superior and deliver a NI 43-101-compliant report in support of a mineral resource within four years.
“As much as we would have liked Yamana to continue its earn-in, their decision to opt out provides an opportunity for others to participate in this unique, camp-scale, regional mineral exploration play in a stable and mining friendly jurisdiction,” said Northern Superior President and CEO Dr. T.F. Morris. “This at a time when such opportunities are essentially non-existent.”
Northern Superior is an exploration stage company engaged in the identification, evaluation and exploration, mostly of gold properties in Ontario and Quebec. The company’s is currently focused on two key projects, the Croteau Est in west-central Quebec and the Ti-pa-haa-kaa-ning (TPK) in northwestern Ontario.
The TPK contains two large independent mineralized systems. The first gold-bearing area is contained within the Big Dam and New Growth areas of the property and is a laterally extensive mineralized shear system stretching 35 km across the southern portion of the property.
The second is located within the Annex area of the property. This system is defined by a gold grain-in-till dispersal corridor. Mineralized boulders collected from within this corridor returned assay values of up to 727 g/t gold, 111 g/t silver and 4.1% copper. Drill results returned grades of up to 4.62 g/t gold over 5.5 metres.
The company say it has benefitted in many ways from the work completed by Yamana over the past year.
After Yamana’s $2 million investment, eight gold-bearing shear systems thought to be capable of hosting economic deposits of gold, are now clearly defined within the Big Dam area of the property. “This is a significant advancement of our understanding of gold emplacement mechanisms within this area of the property,” Northern Superior said.
It said the mineralized system on the Big Dam part of the TPK property represents only one of two regional-scale systems contained within the property boundaries. Yamana was unable to complete exploration on the Annex portion of the property, leaving it open for further exploration work.
In addition, Northern Superior said it continues to have the support of the Neskantaga First Nation via the recently extended three-year extension of the Early Exploration Benefits Agreement.