Aurelius Minerals up 86% on Mikwam assay results

Aurelius Minerals Inc. [AUL-TSXV] shares rallied sharply Tuesday after the company released additional drilling results from its Mikwam Property in Ontario.

Aurelius is a gold exploration company with a focus on advancing two district-scale gold projects in the Abitibi Greenstone Belt in Ontario, which ranks as one of the world’s most prolific mining districts. They include the 944-hectare Mikwam Property in the Burntbush area on the Casa Berardi trend and the 11,593-hectare Lipton Property on the Lower Detour Trend.

Assay results released Tuesday are from three additional holes from the recently completed 17-hole (3,923 metre) Phase Two drilling program at Mikwam. The company said three holes intersected significant gold mineralization with increasingly higher grades.

Highlights include 26.1 metres of grade 7.1 g/t gold in hole AUL-18-15.

“We are very excited as we continue to see significant intersections of gold mineralization in our drilling of the Mikwam Property,” said Aurelius President and CEO Mark Ashcroft.

Investors reacted by sending Aurelius shares up 85.71% or $0.03 to 6.5 cents on volume of 19.6 million. The shares trade in a 52-week range of $0.02 and 13 cents.

The Phase Two program involved systematically drilling 17 holes on five north-south cross sections, on approximately 150 metres of strike, working out from hole AUL-18-07 of the Phase One Program, which returned 3.7 g/t gold over 22 metres. The three holes reported on Tuesday contain several of the highest grade intervals to date at the property.

Drilling on the cross sections was designed to confirm the company’s interpretation of the gold mineralization to a depth of approximately 300 metres on 30-metre to 40-metre spaced intersections. Mineralization remains open at depth and along strike, the company said.

“We have encountered a very consistent gold zone at Mikwam and are very encouraged about the potential moving forward,” said Jeremy Niemi, vice-president, exploration at Aurelius. “We have successfully achieved our goals to gain an understanding of the controls on the gold mineralization and to expand the volume of mineralized rock,” Niemi said.

“We are well positioned for the next round of work at the project to continue to grow the Mikwam Gold Zone and locate new gold zones on our property.”

Hole AUL-18-15 intersected two intervals of important gold mineralization and is hosted in quartz-sulphide structures which cross-cut the lithology at the project.

The first interval had a wider interval of 7.1 g/t gold over 26.1 metres through the main Mikwam Gold Zone. Within this interval, the gold grades were consistently over 4 g/t in 21 of 24 samples. The highest value sample was 24.2 g/t gold over one metre.

The second interval of importance was intersected outside the main Mikwam Gold Zone and into the footwall, which may be a new gold structure to follow up on, the company said. This interval includes 9.9 g/t gold over one metre within a wider intersection, grading 1.5 g/t gold over 8.1 metres.