Casino drilling scheduled

Around-the-clock drilling with three rigs is to be in full swing by March 31 at the Casino copper-gold-molybdenum project in the southern Yukon.

Following the recent plan of arrangement with Casino Silver Mines, Pacific Sentinel Gold (VSE) holds a 100% interest in the property subject to 5% net profits interest held by Consultant Archer Cathro & Associates. Under the agreement, Casino shareholders received three units of Pacific Sentinel for each four shares tendered. The Pacific Sentinel units include a share plus a warrant to purchase an additional share at $3.00 until May 31, 1993.

This year’s $7.2-million program is to delineate the Casino deposit which, prior to last year’s 15,500 ft. of drilling, contained an estimated preliminary reserve of about 417 million tons grading 0.30% copper, 0.038% molybdenum and 0.01 oz. gold per ton.

The company did not release a reserve estimate based on the 1992 drilling, although it did note an average grade increase of 18% for copper, 15% for molybdenum and 53% for gold.

The deposit remains open laterally as well as to depth and Pacific Sentinel Vice-president Douglas Forster is confident the deposit will be enlarged significantly.

Pacific Sentinel has about 17.7 million shares outstanding and about 21.5 million fully diluted, including the exercise of the 3.3 million warrants. Forster said the company has about $1.7 million in working capital and noted that the expected exercise of the warrants will add about $9.9 million to the treasury at the end of May, leaving ample funds for the work program.