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Novus Gold Corp. (TSXV: NOV, "Novus") is pleased to announce
that it has entered into a letter of intent with Australian-listed EnviroGold Limited (ASX:EVG.ax
- News) pursuant to which EnviroGold will have the option to invest up to US$10
million to acquire up to a 50% interest in Novus's Dominican Republic
subsidiary (the "Dominican Corporation") that holds its La Paciencia and La Yugua
Properties. The transaction is subject to entering into of a formal joint
venture shareholders' agreement between the parties, as well as regulatory
approval. The funds will be invested directly into the Dominican Corporation
and used for the exploration of the Properties over the next three years
under the operatorship of Novus. If EnviroGold
exercises its full option and acquires a 50% interest in the Dominican
Corporation, it will have the right to purchase an additional 10% interest in
the Dominican Corporation from Novus for US$5 million for a one year period.
If EnviroGold does not exercise this option, Novus
will have a similar option back.
EnviroGold
operates the Las Lagunas Gold Tailings Project
adjacent to the Pueblo Viejo mine site in the Dominican Republic, and has the
right to reprocess historic tailings from the mine under a profit sharing
agreement with the Government. It is constructing an Albion/CIL Plant for
this purpose and has reported that it will reprocess 5.137 Mt of refractory
tailings from the Pueblo Viejo mine grading 3.8 g/t gold and 38.6 g/t silver
(JORC Resource of 621,000 oz of gold and 6,400,000 oz of silver) with an
estimated production cost of US$313/oz gold. Envirogold
has arranged equity and debt financing in the amount of US$81,000,000 for the
project. The estimated Project life is seven years from the start of
production late this year. The Letter of Intent contains provisions pursuant
to which the Dominican Corporation will have the right to buy the Plant and
related facilities, after completion of the Project, for a value to be
negotiated.
The La Paciencia property (8,600 hectares)
is located 10 kilometres west of the Pueblo Viejo
gold deposit and is underlain by the same geology. The La Yagua
property (9,900 hectares) is located 20 kilometres
southwest of La Paciencia. Both concessions
are approximately one hour northwest of the Dominican Republic's capital
city, Santo Domingo.
The La Paciencia Property
The La Paciencia property is underlain by
the same geology as the Pueblo Viejo gold deposit and its topographic
expression is a large hill, the same as Pueblo Viejo. It is speculated
that a higher silicic content in the local rocks is
responsible for both hills. Work to date has discovered elevated gold
values in soils along structural lineaments on the property.
The La Yagua Property
The La Yagua property adjoins the GlobeStar Mining Corp. property hosting the Cerro de Maimon copper-gold-silver mine. Perilya Ltd. has
acquired GlobeStar for $184-million.
Exploration work to date has outlined five new high-priority
gold-copper targets on the property. The most significant target is defined
by high gold values in stream sediment samples along the Osama River. This
target is six kilometres long and is open for
expansion. The Osama River is the surface expression of a major lineament.
Work carried out in 2009 on La Yagua
property (as reported in Stockwatch press releases
dated Aug. 12, 2009, and Oct. 8, 2009) outlined a north-south-trending, one-kilometre-long structure represented by gossans
containing copper-gold-silver mineralization. Grab sample values, from
oxidized material, ranged as high as 21.33 per cent copper, 13 grams per tonne gold and 173 g/t silver. More than 50 per cent of
the samples collected graded more than 1 per cent copper. Two similar
parallel mineralized structures were partially exposed. Grab samples from
these structures returned values of up to 2.95 per cent copper, 8.4 g/t gold
and 17 g/t silver.
Mining in the Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic is a stable Caribbean country that occupies the
eastern two-thirds of the island of Hispaniola, with Haiti occupying the
remaining one-third. The largest mining development in the country is the
Pueblo Viejo deposit, which is being put into production by Barrick and Goldcorp (60 and 40 per cent, respectively).
The project hosts a reserve of 23.7 million ounces of gold, 130 million
ounces of silver and 500 million pounds of copper to be mined over a 25-year
mine life. The mine is expected to produce one million ounces of gold per
year for the first five years.
Mike Magrum, PEng,
a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101, has approved the
technical content of this news release.
On behalf of the board of directors of
NOVUS GOLD CORP.
"Mike Magrum"
Mike Magrum, President
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(as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts
responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.
This News Release contains forward-looking statements. Forward-looking
statements are statements which relate to future events. In some cases, you
can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as
"may", "should", "expects", "plans",
"anticipates", "believes", "estimates",
"predicts", "potential" or "continue" or the
negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are
only predictions and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other
factors that may cause our or our industry's actual results, levels of
activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any
future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or
implied by these forward-looking statements.
While these forward-looking statements, and any assumptions upon which
they are based, are made in good faith and reflect our current judgment
regarding the direction of our business, actual results will almost always
vary, sometimes materially, from any estimates, predictions, projections,
assumptions or other future performance suggested herein. Except as required
by applicable law, the Company does not intend to update any of the
forward-looking statements to conform these statements to actual results.
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