Rubicon Minerals intercepts gold at Phoenix project

Gold explorer Rubicon Minerals Corp. (TSE:RMX) released Thursday drill intercepts from its flagship property the Phoenix gold project, in Ontario.

The company is focused on the exploration and development of gold deposits and its key asset is the Phoenix gold project in Ontario's Red Lake gold camp.

Rubicon is carrying out a 12-month $55 million program with the impetus to optimize some aspects of its preliminary economic assessment.

This program, according to Rubicon, contemplates a total of 68,000 metres of drilling of which 41,000 metres remain to be drilled before third quarter this year.

At the Crown Zone, drilling was performed to test the near-surface on nominal 40 and 50 metre spacing on six sections over a strike length of 225 metres.

Drilling revealed good continuity of mineralization along strike and down dip between sections, Rubicon said Thursday.

Notable highlights intersections include 113.8 grams per tonne of gold (g/t) over 2.9 metres in drill hole CZD-2012-19. This includes 323.5 g/t gold over 1.0 metres.  

Drill hole CZD-2012-06 found 10.6 g/t gold over 5.5 metres. This includes 41.2 g/t over 1.0 metres, the company added.

Rubicon’s winter drilling campaign also focused on in-fill drilling of near surface West Limb Basalt 2 area and expansion of this zone to the northeast, where it discovered a shallow zone of strong mineralization in the northeastern portion.

Other notable intersections include 446.4 g/t gold over 2.0 metres in drill hole CZD-2012-26. These also include 1,770 g/t gold over 0.5 metres.

Drill hole CZD-2012-25 also found 28.8 g/t gold over 5.0 metres, which included 134.97 g/t gold over 0.9 metres.

Meanwhile in-fill drilling is ongoing at the 122-10 area which has returned positive results, the company noted.

It said mineralization is hosted by strongly altered and locally brecciated F2 basalts with multiple visible gold occurrences.

These highlights include intersections of 13.5 g/t gold over 13.8 metres in drill hole 305-03-162. This also includes 21.2 g/t gold over 2.2 metres and 25.5 g/t gold over 4.5 metres.

"Our stated objectives in this program of drilling were to carry out infill drilling and to explore for extensions to the F2 gold
system," chief executive David Adamson said in a statement. 

"The remaining drilling in the current budget will focus on our target of expanding the known limits of the F2 gold system. Initial
results from expansion drilling are encouraging in several new target areas."

Rubicon controls over 100 square miles of prime exploration ground in the prolific Red Lake gold district which hosts Goldcorp's
high-grade, world class Red Lake Mine.