White Gold to explore for critical minerals in Yukon

White Gold Corp. (TSXV: WGO, OTCQX: WHGOF) is looking to explore the critical minerals potential of its 3,150 km² land package in west-central Yukon, having identified prospective targets for copper, molybdenum, tungsten, antimony, zinc and bismuth during its ongoing gold exploration.

The company's portfolio currently comprises 15,876 quartz claims across 26 properties that together cover approximately 40% of Yukon's White Gold District. Most of the exploration focused on its flagship gold project of the same name, for which it reported an updated resource last week.

White Gold says this new resource estimate -- covering four deposits for a total of 17.6 million tonnes at 2.12 g/t gold for 1.2 million oz. in the indicated category and 24.4 million tonnes at 1.42 g/t gold for 1.1 million oz. inferred category -- makes the project "one of the highest-grade open pit gold resources in Canada."

The deposits are also complimented by several new gold discoveries and prospective targets, creating what White Gold chief executive David D’Onofrio calls "a very robust gold exploration pipeline in a highly prolific and underexplored area of the Yukon."

Shares of White Gold rose by $0.02 or 9.5% to $0.23 apiece by 1:00 p.m. ET, for a market capitalization of $41.7 million.

Critical minerals opportunities

While undergoing its gold exploration, White Gold has also identified numerous critical mineral opportunities, which according to D’Onofrio, are believed to be quite prospective based on their size, the work done to date, underlying geology and how they compare to other targets and deposits.

White Gold currently possesses a large soil geochemical database (280,000+ samples) that includes several large-scale critical minerals anomalies (Cu, Mo, W, Sb, Zn, Bi). According to the company, all of these have been unevaluated and largely undrilled.

To date, the exploration team has identified several critical mineral targets: Bridget, Isaac, Mascot, Aries, Mount Hart and Guilder. Several of these are located in the Dawson Range, which hosts several significant copper-gold porphyry deposits including the Casino deposit, the Minto mine and the Carmacks project.

Shawn Ryan, White Gold's chief technical advisor, specifically pointed to the Bridget target, part of the Pedlar property, as one of the best (based on soils) untested copper-molybdenum porphyry targets in the district. It sits just north of the large Casino project and has never been diamond drilled.

The Casino copper-gold-molybdenum deposit, being developed by Western Copper and Gold (TSX: WRN, NYSE American: WRN), currently contains a measured and indicated resource of 7.6 billion lb. copper and 14.5 million oz. gold, plus an inferred resource of 3.3 billion lb. copper and 6.6 million oz. gold.

In addition to the high-priority Bridget target, the Isaac target on the Hayes property and the Mascot target on the Betty property are also situated near the Casino deposit.