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May 15, 2013
Dear fellow shareholders,
In 2012, West Kirkland Mining achieved some of its key objectives in the Long Canyon Trend of Nevada and Utah. We defined our first gold/silver resource estimate at the TUG deposit in Utah and discovered additional at-surface and near-surface gold mineralization at our 12 Mile property. 12 Mile is located just 10 kilometers west of TUG on the Nevada side of the state line.
WKM has been very active in early 2013 working on an engineering study and preliminary economic report for potential gold production at TUG and with active exploration drilling on our land position of more than 1,000 square kilometers. Our Long Canyon land position in Nevada and Utah runs for about 65 kilometers southwest from our TUG deposit to Newmont's Long Canyon gold deposit.
Our full-time base of operations for work at TUG and for regional exploration is in Elko, Nevada. The exploration team there is headed by Richard Histed, an experienced gold exploration geologist who has spent most of his career in Nevada and now lives in Elko.
In November we announced the appointment of Sandy McVey as Chief Operating Officer, who has over 30 years' experience in mine and construction management in Canada, the USA and Africa. Sandy recently completed the successful design, permitting and construction of the Shafter silver mine in Texas. As COO of West Kirkland, Sandy will oversee the engineering, permitting and potential development plans at TUG. TUG is modeled as a modest scale efficient, low-cost open pit heap leach operation.
We have commissioned Roscoe Postle Associates Inc. to produce an independent Preliminary Economic Assessment of TUG, while we continue to work with Utah state officials to establish a permitting timeline. TUG is situated in an ideal mining environment: in a mining friendly US state, with access to rail, road, water and electricity and a skilled workforce on both side of the Nevada/Utah state line.
In a market where the S&P/TSX fell 500 points from 1,700 to 1,200 and many junior exploration companies were struggling for funding, we closed a financing of $1.7 million last June to continue our work for the balance 2012. A subsequent financing of $5.6 million in January of 2013 ensures that we'll achieve our objectives moving forward. At the time of writing this, WKM has approximately 60 million shares outstanding and 87 million fully diluted. What's most impressive is our base of institutional holders.
After our January 2013 financing, Wexford, a mining-savvy investment fund out of Connecticut now holds 19.8% of WKM, your Management team has 11.5% and Newmont Mining continues to hold just under 10%.
We made the decision in early 2013 to close our Kirkland Lake Ontario office and focus our efforts in Nevada and Utah. We continue to hold a significant land position in Kirkland Lake.
Our key milestones for 2013 are:
- The completion of Preliminary Economic Assessment on our TUG gold deposit
- Drill results from the Long Canyon Trend
- Surface work results from identified new gold occurrences from our large scale holdings in the Long Canyon Trend.
In this challenging gold market and even more challenging mining equity market we plan to be judicious with our expenditures and sensitive to the realistic operating environment. At the same time we are looking for opportunities of other gold projects that may represent extraordinary value. We look to take advantage of our technical team strength combined with our strong shareholder base.
We thank you for your support and look forward to an exciting and rewarding 2013.
Sincerely,
R. Michael Jones. |