LKA Gold Inc. reports that Kinross has informed the Company of its decision to terminate its exploration programme at LKA's Golden Wonder mine located near Lake City.
Considering the positive results from both the surface evaluation programme conducted in 2015 and the subsequent drilling programme, LKA management expressed surprised at the Kinross decision.
LKA Project Geologist, Rauno Perttu, commented: "After reviewing the Kinross drilling results I'm a bit puzzled as to why they would discontinue the programme after only five drill holes, all of which penetrated the Golden Wonder structure and encountered gold and telluride shows. Drill cores from the third and fourth holes contained many of the elements encountered in the Golden Wonder's high-grade zones. Expecting to hit a relatively small target like an ore chute with five widely dispersed surface drill holes seems a bit unrealistic to me. This programme definitely needs to be followed up on and completed. Two of the holes may have been near new ore chutes, and the strongest new targets remain untested."
Since Kinross has consistently refused to comment on this exploration project, even when asked for off-the-record opinions by LKA management, the decision to terminate the project this early in the process remains a matter of speculation.
LKA President, Kye Abraham, added: "Historically, widely-dispersed surface drilling at the Golden Wonder has been notoriously inconclusive and failed to discover the first bonanza-grade ore shoot. It's been tried before. If we had known that Kinross expected to hit an ore shoot, or high-grade zone, with its first five holes from the surface, we would have been reluctant to allow them to start. This is damaging to our project and very disappointing."
LKA is currently pursing options with other interested parties.