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“I have the interests of my shareholders to consider,” MacKay said, adding that she intends to keep all options open until such time as a formal offer is received and can be evaluated.

Pezim’s formal offer to purchase is now being mailed to Stikine shareholders and is on the basis of five shares of Calpine, together with one Calpine warrant, for one share of Stikine. (At press time, Calpine was trading at $2.55 while Stikine topped $15.00.) The share purchase warrants are to be exercisable within a 3-year period to purchase an additional share of Calpine at a price of $2.00.

“Calpine intends to hold Stikine shares tendered as a major long term investment,” said Murray Pezim, president of Calpine. The offer is for 51% of the issued capital, although the company said it “reserves the right to take up a greater or lesser number of shares tendered.” Consolidated Stikine has about two million shares outstanding, while Calpine has nearly 12.6 million.

“Unless there is something in the official offer that I don’t see in the initial offer, I’m certainly not considering tendering my shares,” said John Toffan, chairman of Consolidated Stikine. “And I can’t see that it’s to anyone’s benefit to accept the offer at this time.”

Toffan said Consolidated Stikine has a “friendly” relationship with Calpine, but he stressed that the company has “other options” under consideration. “Plus we can stay the way we are because we are adequately financed and don’t really need any help at this point.”

Meanwhile, the joint venture has resumed drilling on the Eskay Creek project with one rig, and a second Longyear 38 drill is expected to be mobilized to the project shortly. The joint venture intends to drill about 45,500 ft to the end of March 1989 at an anticipated cost of $3.0 million. The camp is being expanded to accommodate a second drill crew and crews are also building core storage and logging facilities to handle up to 75,000 ft of core.

The drill currently on-site will begin infill drilling on the 21 zone discovery in order to establish a tonnage and grade estimate for the zone which recently yielded intersections of 21.3 ft of 0.20 oz gold and 242.1 ft. of 0.136 oz gold, with the holes ending in mineralization. In addition to the previously reported 96.5-ft interval grading 0.752 oz gold, other recent assays from the zone include 0.163 oz gold over 157.4 ft and 0.172 oz gold over 273.9 ft.

The second rig will be used to continue the on-strike and downdip extensions of the 21 zone, along with evaluation of other known mineralized zones in close proximity to the 21 zone. Core samples from the mineralized zones will also be collected for metallurgical tests, and all existing core samples will be assayed for their copper, lead and zinc content which in parts of the 21 zone mineralization is reported to be in the 1%-2% range. Calpine said detailed geophysical surveys covering the Eskay Creek project area will begin later this month to bring much needed structural information that will be utilized to direct ground exploration for the entire property *

Calpine is a Prime Capital company, with Prime Capital currently holding 1.5 million shares. Last week Prime announced that it intends to exercise its option to purchase an additional 1.5 million shares of Calpine.

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