VANCOUVER: Abacus Mining & Exploration Corporation announced that Mr. Paul G. Anderson, M.Sc., P.Geo., has been appointed by the Board of Directors as CEO of the Company.
Mr. Anderson has been President and COO of Abacus since November of 2017 and will be relinquishing the COO role to become President and CEO. No other changes to management are taking place, with Mr. Michael McInnis continuing in his role as Executive Chairman and Mrs. Jeannine Webb continuing as CFO and Corporate Secretary.
Abacus’s main asset is its 20% ownership interest in the Ajax copper-gold project, located near Kamloops, British Columbia, which is managed by base metal major KGHM Polska Miedź S.A., who hold the remaining 80%.
The Ajax Project contains significant quantities of copper and gold, within a NI 43-101 Proven and Probable Mineral Reserve of 426 Mt at 0.29% Cu, 0.19 g/t Au and 0.39 g/t Ag. Contained metal is in the order of 2.7 Bil lbs Cu, 2.6 Moz Au and 5.3 Moz Ag*.
The Company also has additional copper properties of merit in Nevada. The Willow and adjacent Nev-Lorraine copper-molybdenum properties are in the Yerington copper camp, southeast of Reno. Drilling by the Company in 2018 intersected a key intrusive rock unit on Willow that hosts all known porphyry Cu-Mo deposits at Yerington. This rock unit was not previously known to exist on the Company’s property, and it represents a significant new discovery. The target is large and robust, and it remains essentially untested.
Abacus’s third project is Jersey Valley, an epithermal precious metal property within the Battle Mountain trend of north-central Nevada, which is also prospective for Au-Ag skarns.
It lies in close proximity to both the Phoenix/Fortitude mine complex, a gold skarn with approximately 14 Moz gold plus significant Ag and Cu past production and a proposed mine life to 2063, and the Cove/McCoy Mine, a Carlin-type gold deposit with 3.4 Moz gold and 110 Moz Ag past production (data is from the Newmont Mines and Premier Gold Mines websites. The reader is cautioned that the mineralization hosted on nearby properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Company’s Jersey Valley gold property).
A diamond drilling program has just been initiated at Jersey Valley to test several strong IP geophysical targets identified late last year. Past operators identified significant gold and silver mineralization (see News Release dated February 8, 2021) in past drilling, and the Company’s current program is designed to build upon this work.
Abacus is a mineral exploration and mine development company currently focused on copper and gold in B.C. and Nevada. The Company’s main asset is a 20% ownership interest, together with KGHM Polska Miedź S.A. (80%), in the proposed copper-gold Ajax Mine located southwest of Kamloops, B.C., which has undergone a joint provincial and federal environmental assessment process. On December 14, 2017, a decision was made by the B.C.
Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy and the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum resources to decline to issue an environmental assessment certificate for the Project. KGHM have recently reopened an office in Kamloops, B.C. to facilitate First Nation, community and governmental engagement in order to advance the project towards a potential resubmission of the environmental application.
Abacus also holds an option on the Willow copper-gold property located near Yerington, Nevada in which it can acquire up to a 75% ownership interest, and the contiguous Nev-Lorraine claims subject to a ten-year lease agreement. In addition, Abacus holds a 15-year lease on the Jersey Valley gold property, near Battle Mt., Nevada.