TSX-V-listed Pancontinental Resources has been selected, through a competitive process, to explore the former Brewer gold mine – an abandoned property that lies about 12 km north-east along trend from the producing Haile gold mine in Carolina, US.
Brewer is surrounded by Pancon's 100%-owned Jefferson gold project.
Pancon CEO Layton Croft said on Wednesday that they were ready to investigate the underexplored project, with the goal of discovering new oxide gold mineralisation and the underlying copper/gold porphyry system by 2021.
Between 1987 and 1995, Brewer produced 178 000 oz of oxide gold from openpits that extended to 50-m depths, where copper- and gold-rich sulphides were exposed but could not be processed by the oxide heap leach processing facility.
“We are thrilled to have been selected to explore what is widely understood by geologists and geophysicists, as well as by the US Geological Survey, to be a former shallow oxide gold mine possibly sitting amidst additional oxide gold mineralisation and atop a high sulphidation gold-copper porphyry system,” said Croft.
Pancon was selected together with Environmental Risk Transfer (ERT) – a company providing environmental risk-transfer solutions to eliminate environmental liabilities. The partners worked together since March last year to win the selection process, led by the Brewer Gold Receiver.
In 1999, the Brewer Gold Company, a UK-owned entity, abandoned the site, leaving the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SC DHEC) and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to handle reclamation activities and address conditions posing environmental risk.
In 2005, Brewer was designated a US EPA Superfund site as per the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensations and Liability Act. In 2019, SC DHEC sought the appointment of the Brewer Gold Receiver (a legal construct similar to a trustee) to facilitate the leasing, sale or other use or disposition of the abandoned property, including potential renewal of mineral exploration and mining development.
ERT is also involved at Missouri Cobalt – a former and current US EPA Superfund site now owned and operated by an ERT affiliate.