Australian miner Newcrest has withdrawn from the option and earn-in agreement for the Rattlesnake Hills gold project, in Wyoming, US, TSX-V-listed GFG Resources has said.

Since September 2018, Newcrest has invested $5-million in exploration expenditures on the project, which included more than 4 000 m of drilling, extensive reprocessing and modelling of regional and local geophysics, hyperspectral scanning of historic core and the application of machine learning technology to generate a new deposit-scale alteration and targeting model.

“We are grateful to have been able to work with Newcrest’s world-class team over the past 18 months,” stated GFG president and CEO Brian Skanderbeg.

“Their investment, modelling, target analysis and drilling programs have added significant value and understanding to the project. Over the coming months, we will initiate a strategic review to identify the best path forward to advance the project with the objective of maximising shareholder value.”

Meanwhile, GFG says it continues to explore its Pen gold project located 40 km west of the Timmins gold district, in Canada.

The company has intersected a significant high-grade gold system at the Nib prospect at its Pen gold project. Hole PEN-20-47 intersected 71.27 g/t of gold over 8.5 m, including 511.00 g/t gold over 1.15 m at a vertical depth of about 50 m below the surface.

During the first quarter of 2020, the company completed seven holes (2 751 m) as part of its 2020 Phase 1 drill programme. Currently, the company is drilling the final hole of the programme at the HGM prospect and expects to finish the hole in the coming week. The Phase 1 drill programme was designed to test targets at the Nib, HGM and Slate Rock prospects with about 3 500 m of drilling.

“Hole PEN-20-47 is the most significant intercept ever drilled on our 500 km² Pen gold project,” stated Skanderbeg.

“This exceptional intercept, along with the multiple mineralised intervals further downhole, demonstrates that the Nib prospect has the potential to host a large-scale gold system. These recent results, in combination with numerous significant intercepts at our other regional targets, validate our view that this portion of the Abitibi has the potential to host multiple gold deposits next to a world-class gold camp. We look forward to follow-up drilling on this very exciting and underexplored target in our Phase 2 2020 drill programme in the third quarter.”