TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – LSE-listed Nord Gold plans to make an all-cash offer for all outstanding shares of Canadian explorer Northquest, that would give it control of the promising promising Pistol Bay gold project, in northern Canada’s Nunavut Territory.

Nordgold, which already held a 52.3% stake in Northquest, on Tuesday said it planned to make a cash offer of C$0.253 per Northquest common share, valuing Northquest at about C$26.9-million on an undiluted basis.

The company did not specify when it would launch the offer officially. After completing a formal valuation, Nordgold intended to send its take-over bid circular to Northquest shareholders and make all necessary filings with the appropriate securities regulatory authorities.

Nordgold advised that the offer represented a 25% premium to the 20-day volume weighted average price ending on November 23, the trading day before Nordgold's ownership of Northquest increased above 50%, and a 15% premium to the closing price on Friday.

Northquest on Wednesday announced that a glacial till sampling programme that was completed on the Pistol Bay gold project from July to September, had outlined a major new dispersal train similar to those associated with some of Canada’s largest gold deposits, including New Gold’s Blackwater (British Columbia) and Rainy River (Ontario) deposits, as well as Agnico Eagle’s nearby Meliadine deposit.

The newly discovered gold grain anomaly was shown to be part of a significant and systematic dispersal train – now known as the Howitzer Anomaly.

The Pistol Bay gold project covered a 90 km strike length of a gold-bearing trend known as the Pistol Bay Trend, which contained a west-trending series of gold occurrences and gold zones intersected in holes drilled by Northquest in 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014.

In the past five years, since field operations started in April 2011, the company had completed three airborne geophysical surveys and 21 750 m of diamond drilling in 100 drill holes, of which 17 195 m of drilling and 69 drill holes were completed at the Vickers Gold Zone.