TintinaGold Reports Initial Inferred Copper-Cobalt-Silver Resource on Its Sheep Creek Property, Montana, USA
VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA -- (Marketwire) -- 01/06/11 -- TintinaGold Resources Inc. ('TintinaGold' or the 'Company') (TSX VENTURE: TAU) is pleased to announce that it has completed an NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate on one of several copper deposits on its Sheep Creek Copper-Cobalt property ('Sheep Creek') located in Central Montana, USA (see Figure 1).
Highlights:
-- The Upper Copper Zone at Sheep Creek contains an Inferred resource of 7
MMT grading 2.4% Cu, 0.12% Co, and 12.3 g/tonne Ag at a 1.5% Cu cut-off
grade based on an assumed copper price of $2.50/lb.
Table 1 shows a range of Upper Copper Zone Inferred resources at various cut off grades. Using a base case of 1.5% cut off grade based on an assumed copper price of $2.50/lb, the Upper Copper Zone contains 7 million tonnes averaging 2.4% Cu, 0.12% Co, and 12.3 grams/tonne Ag, and containing 366 million pounds of copper. Table 2 shows the individual assay results from all historic and contemporary drill hole intersections that were used in this estimate. After completing and reviewing a verification drill program which twinned 4 of 19 historic Upper Copper Zone drill hole intersections, Mike Lechner, an independent Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, has determined that the new drilling results confirm the historic results, and that the historic intervals can be used to estimate Inferred Resources. Present drill spacing averages about 150 meters.
Jerry Zieg, Vice President of Exploration, said 'We expect this is just the beginning of a series of new resource estimates for the property. The potential to both add more resources by drilling around historic drill results and to locate new copper-cobalt deposits at Sheep Creek property is excellent.'
Table 1 - Upper Copper Zone Inferred Resource:
Undiluted UCZ Resources Using Capped Data (Official Inferred Resources)
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Cu
Cutoff Cu Lbs Co Lbs Ag Ozs
(%) Tonnes (000) Cu (%) Co (%) Ag (g/t) (millions) (millions) (millions)
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0.75 8,677 2.15 0.11 12.1 411 21 3.4
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1.00 8,425 2.19 0.11 12.2 407 21 3.3
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1.25 8,043 2.24 0.12 12.2 397 21 3.2
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1.50 7,037 2.36 0.12 12.3 366 19 2.8
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1.75 6,027 2.49 0.13 12.2 332 17 2.4
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2.00 4,557 2.68 0.14 12.0 271 14 1.8
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2.25 3,389 2.88 0.15 11.5 216 11 1.3
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2.50 2,607 3.04 0.15 11.8 178 9 1.0
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It cannot be assumed that all or any part of an Inferred Mineral Resource will be upgraded to an Indicated or Measured Resource as a result of continued exploration. Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves because there are insufficient studies to demonstrate economic viability. Mineral Resources are global in situ totals. Mineral Resource numbers have been rounded and may not add up in the above table. A NI 43-101 Technical Report detailing the Mineral Resource estimate will be filed on SEDAR within the next 45 days.
Table 2 - Historic and Verification Drill Intersections:
Hole From (m) To (m) Width (m) Width (ft) Cu % Co % Ag (g/t)
---- ---- -- ----- ----- ---- ---- --------
Upper Copper
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Zone
----
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SCC-17 130.79 137.50 6.70 22.00 2.76 0.19 18.0
SC10-003(i) 131.88 139.50 7.62 25.00 3.21 0.17 21.6
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SCC-19 115.24 123.78 8.50 28.00 3.05 0.18 10.4
SC10-001(i) 118.26 125.00 6.74 22.10 3.44 0.18 12.9
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SCC-21 105.61 107.75 2.14 7.00 1.13 0.08 12.5
SCC-22 115.24 117.68 2.44 8.00 1.25 0.04 40.1
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SCC-23 132.62 140.55 7.90 26.00 3.62 0.54 5.4
SC10-002(i) 131.31 138.77 7.46 24.50 2.48 0.36 5.8
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SCC-25 39.63 44.21 4.60 15.00 1.31 0.01 5.6
SCC-29 124.51 125.27 0.76 2.50 1.88 0.01 32.8
SCC-30 92.38 96.65 4.30 14.00 2.84 0.17 7.0
SCC-33 112.80 125.91 13.10 43.00 2.18 0.15 6.4
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SCC-34 108.23 119.82 11.60 38.00 2.24 0.13 10.0
SC10-004(i) 107.90 118.41 10.51 34.50 3.03 0.15 10.0
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SCC-36 31.40 42.38 11.00 36.00 2.30 0.10 6.1
SCC-37 208.54 209.76 1.2 4.00 2.06 0.09 62.3
SCC-38 125.00 127.29 2.3 7.50 2.06 0.06 10.2
SCC-40 71.95 78.05 6.10 20.00 2.46 0.09 26.5
SCC-41 105.79 117.68 11.90 39.00 2.05 0.07 11.1
SC-62 121.19 132.77 11.60 38.00 1.99 0.17 8.4
SC-63 80.95 84.60 3.70 12.00 1.78 0.14 11.0
SC-64 118.90 123.93 5.00 16.50 3.25 0.10 9.4
SC-71 168.29 171.95 3.70 12.00 2.03 0.03 17.9
(i)-TintinaGold's drill holes from verification drilling campaign.
The 'Upper Copper Zone' is a shallow tabular layer of copper-cobalt mineralization with bands of massive chalcopyrite concentrated within a fine grained massive pyritic sulfide layer in a shale and debris flow conglomerate host that lies at depths ranging from 30 meters to 210 meters below the surface and ranges in thickness between 1.2 and 13.1 meters (Figure 2). The historic results summarized in Table 2 were collected from 19 drill holes that define Upper Copper Zone mineralization completed by Cominco American Inc., BHP, and Utah International between 1985 and 1989 in the historic resource area (Figure 1). Four additional holes drilled in 2010 by TintinaGold Resources provide verification of the historic results. All drill hole intersections represent approximate true thicknesses in the gently dipping mineralized zones. Historic resources calculated by earlier operators are non-compliant with NI 43-101 standards and are not being relied upon for resource estimation purposes. There is potential for additional resource in the Upper Copper Zone and in the five other Cu-Co deposits so far identified on the property (Figure 3).
Drilling is planned to resume in early 2011 with the objectives of upgrading the Upper Copper Zone inferred resource to a Measured and/or Indicated status, and to prepare the Lower Copper Zone and other Cu-Co deposits (Figure 3) for Inferred Resource estimates.
The Mineral Resource estimate for the Upper Copper Zone was prepared by Mike Lechner, president of Resource Modeling Inc, an independent Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101. The drill hole database that was used to estimate Mineral Resources consists of 23 drill holes completed by Cominco American Inc., Utah International, BHP, and TintinaGold Resources Inc., totaling 7,085.68 meters. The Mineral Resource estimate was completed by constructing a three dimensional computer block model with a block size of 25m x 25m x 2m for the X, Y, and Z dimensions, respectively. Three-dimensional wireframes were constructed to represent the Upper Copper Zone and Volcano Valley Fault. Grades were capped at 12.5% Cu (3 samples) and 1% Co (4 samples). Two-meter-long drill hole composites were generated from the assay data after capping the high-grade outliners and were subsequently used to estimate copper, cobalt, and silver grades using a three-pass inverse distance cubed method. The block grades were validated visually and by comparing the grades with a nearest neighbour model. A density of 3.85 g/cm2 was selected to tabulate resource tonnage based on density determinations from fresh drill core collected from the TintinaGold 2010 drilling campaign. For TintinaGold Resources 2010 drilling, all QA/QC requirements have been followed including incorporating standards, blanks, and duplicates into the assay procedures. Historical assays were obtained from files donated to the University of Montana drill core collection by Cominco American Inc. These files do not contain original assay certificates, and attempts to recover these have so far have been unsuccessful.
Jerry Zieg, Vice President of Exploration for the Company is a Qualified Person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the information of a scientific nature contained in this news release.
About Sheep Creek
The Sheep Creek deposit is located about 27 km north of White Sulphur Springs along a well maintained gravel road and within two miles of U.S. Highway 89. The Sheep Creek property consists of approximately 5,775 acres of fee simple lands and mining claims in central Montana. The property contains sediment hosted zones of massive sulfide mineralization originally explored by Cominco American Inc. and BHP during the 1980's and early 1990's. The drilling undertaken by Cominco American Inc. and BHP had encountered significant zones of strata-bound copper sulfide with cobalt in multiple bedded pyrite zones in the lower part of the Precambrian Belt Supergroup; this same stratigraphic unit hosts the Sullivan zinc-lead-silver deposit.
About TintinaGold
TintinaGold is a growth company focused on the exploration and development of precious and base metal properties around the world. The Company's experienced management team has assembled an impressive portfolio of gold and base metal projects in Alaska, including the Colorado Creek gold project, located in southwest Alaska approximately 100 miles northwest of the 40 million ounce Donlin Creek project, the Kugruk copper project located 70 miles north of Nome in the northern Seward Peninsula, Alaska, and the Sheep Creek copper-cobalt property in Montana. The Company, in a short period of time, has successfully established itself in several of the most prolific mineral belts in North America.
Website: www.tintinagold.com
ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Raj Chowdhry, C.A., President & CEO
Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: Certain disclosure in this release, including statements regarding the Company's plans for and intentions with respect to exploration of the Company's Sheep Creek property, constitutes 'forward-looking statements' within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and Canadian securities legislation. In making the forward-looking statements in this release, the Company has applied certain factors and assumptions that the Company believes are reasonable, including that the Company is able to obtain any government or other regulatory approvals and any financing required to complete the Company's planned exploration activities, that the Company is able to procure equipment and supplies in sufficient quantities and on a timely basis, that the Company's exploration activities on the Sheep Creek property will not be affected by actions of environmental activists or other special interest groups, and that actual results of exploration activities are consistent with management's expectations. However, the forward-looking statements in this release are subject to numerous risks, uncertainties and other factors relating to TintinaGold's operation as a mineral exploration company and the Sheep Creek property that may cause future results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Such uncertainties and risks include, among others, actual results of the Company's exploration activities being different than those expected by management, uncertainties involved in the interpretation of drilling results and geological tests, delays in obtaining or inability to obtain required government or other regulatory approvals or financing, interference with TintinaGold's exploration activities by environmental activists or other special interest groups, inability to procure equipment and supplies in sufficient quantities and on a timely basis, equipment breakdowns and bad weather. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. TintinaGold does not intend, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation to, update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.
To view Figure 1 - Historic drill pattern and verification drilling, Sheep Creek, Montana, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/tau_0106_2011_fig_1.pdf
To view Figure 2 - Cross section through historic resource area, Sheep Creek, Montana, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/tau_01_06_2011_fig_2.pdf
To view Figure 3 Copper-cobalt deposits so far identified at Sheep Creek, Montana, please visit the following link: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/tau_0106_2011_fig_3.pdf
Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
Contacts:
TintinaGold Resources Inc.
Kelsey Chin
Direct Line: 604-628-1162
604-628-1163 (FAX)
KChin@tintinagold.com
www.tintinagold.com