Company hopes for gold
Interest in gold around the province has been growing for years and one of those areas where people have been prospecting is near Hopedale, on the north coast of Labrador.
Roger Moss, president and CEO of Labrador Gold has been raising capital for projects in Labrador and in the Gander area and says it’s been going great so far.
The company has been working on the project in Hopedale in the Florence Lake greenstone belt for a few years and took on another project in central Newfoundland in March. Moss said they’ve narrowed down where they think there is real potential for gold to a fairly small area of the Hopedale property.
“We have one area that stretches about three kilometres where we have gold anomalies in soil and rock intermittently. One of the things we want to do is fill in the gaps in anomalies along that stretch and once that’s done, we should be able to define targets and start drilling.”
Moss said he isn’t sure when exactly that will happen, as the company is focusing right now on the project in Newfoundland, but they do plan to get to Hopedale this summer to continue the work.
Moss said he sees a lot of opportunity in Labrador, which is still largely unexplored for gold and already home to two world -class mines in Labrador west and Voisey’s Bay.
“There was a lot of interest in base metals. After Voisey’s Bay there was a lot of interest in nickel exploration, but gold in Labrador hasn’t really been looked at to any significant degree,” he said.
He said interest has gone up in the last three or four years in the province, with some significant gold discoveries being made on the island. Greenstone belts in other parts of the country and around the world have yielded substantial gold deposits, he said, so that looks good for the Hopedale area.
Stephen Piercey, an Earth Sciences professor and the NSERC-ALTIUS Industrial Research Chair in Mineral Deposits at Memorial University, echoed Moss’ comments about greenstone belts.
“These kind of environments, globally, produce a lot of gold in old rocks,” he said.
“These rocks are 2.9 billion to three billion years old and elsewhere on the planet big gold camps are hosted in similar environments. There are differences but the general geological environments are similar so that makes it attractive to potential investors.”
Piercey has done a lot of fieldwork in Labrador over the last 25 years, and said the region has immense potential for mineral deposits.
INTEREST IN GOLD HIGH
He said there are a number of factors why interest in gold is high right now, including geopolitical conditions and the resulting higher prices gold has seen
Gold hit a nine-year high on July 8, with an almost 30 per cent increase in the price this year alone.
Derek H. C. Wilton, honorary research professor in Earth Sciences at Memorial, agreed with Piercey that the high price of gold and geography of the both the island and Labrador are big factors in the increased interest.
Wilton said there has been sporadic gold exploration in the province over the years, referencing Anaconda and Marathon Gold, both companies with projects in central Newfoundland.
Like Piercey, Wilton has done a lot of work in Labrador over his career and agreed that the type and age of rocks in the Florence Lake greenstone belt are prime candidates for gold.