TORONTO, Sept. 09, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bonavista Resources Corp. ("Bonavista " or the "Company"), a private mineral exploration company, is pleased to announce that drilling is underway on a 1,000 m core drilling campaign at the Hickey’s Pond prospect, part of the Company’s Burin Gold Project in eastern Newfoundland.
In 2018, Bonavista acquired a large land package on the Burin Peninsula and began systematic work to assess the regional potential of the land package as well as targeted exploration on underexplored historical showings. The Company currently holds approximately 16,000 hectares of claims either wholly or through an option agreement with Newfoundland prospectors. The land package includes all the historical showings on the Hickey’s Pond trend and covers over 20 km of strike length along a documented but largely unexplored district.
The objective of the drill program is to demonstrate the potential of the Hickey’s Pond alteration system to host significant gold resources. Initially, the program will focus on targeting the down-plunge projection of the surface showing at Hickey’s Pond, where the Company’s channel sampling program in 2018 returned 20.0 m at 9.34 g/t Au, including 7.0 m of 19.75 g/t Au and 3.68% Cu in vuggy residual quartz and high-grade Au-Cu breccia.
Bonavista has extended the geophysical signature of the Hickey’s Pond alteration zone over 7 km along strike. This inaugural drill campaign will feature six to eight drill holes, targeting geological and geophysical features along over 3 km of strike on either side of the historical showing.
Drilling is expected to be completed by early October, with assay results anticipated in early November. Success in demonstrating favourable alteration and mineralisation in this drilling campaign will lead to an immediate IPO/RTO transaction, planned for H1/2021. A larger 5,000 m drill program is planned to follow the IPO/RTO transaction to test both the strike extent of Hickey’s Pond and Bonavista’s pipeline regional targets.
Qualified Person
David Clark, MSc, PGeo, President of Bonavista Resources, is the Company's designated Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101"). He has prepared the technical content of this news release.
Acknowledgement
The Company acknowledges the financial assistance of the Mineral Development Division, Department of Natural Resources of Newfoundland & Labrador, via its Junior Exploration Assistance Program. The program provides valuable financial rebates on exploration expenditures made in the province to qualifying exploration companies. The Company has benefited from the program yearly since 2018.
About Bonavista Resources
Bonavista is a private exploration company focused on exploring a large landholding in the underexplored Avalonian terrane on the Burin Peninsula, Newfoundland. This underexplored belt has direct analogues at Hope Brook in southwest Newfoundland (First Mining Gold) and Haile in South Carolina (OceanaGold), both multi million-ounce resources hosted in the same geological terrane as the Burin peninsula rocks. Limited historical exploration by previous explorers combined with comprehensive documentation of the overall alteration system by government and academic workers creates a compelling opportunity for the discovery of Newfoundland’s next multi million-ounce gold system. The Company’s Burin Gold Project hosts several historical high-sulphidation gold showings over ~20 km of prospective geology, the best known of which is the Hickey’s Pond showing.
For more information, visit www.bonavistaresources.com or contact:
David Clark, MSc, PGeo, President
dclark@bonavistaresources.com