QUESTION: I've just seen your announcement about a large intersection of gold with very good grade. Is this part of a shear zone, in which case it might be a million oz or a bit more ... or is this intersection part of a porphyry system which would likely become many million oz au? Has anybody got any idea how large the orebody might be? You have my attention !! Thankyou Mr Hatrick ( potential New Zealand investor)

Mr. Hatrick

Currently, the issues at Santa Fe revolve around the geometry of the mineralized zones that have been cut by coring. The geometry of the mineralized systems that have been reported is still being worked on. We can, however, state the following.

Santa Fe is a typical Carlin-type gold system that has been disrupted by post-mineral faulting. To date, we have not been able to correlate the mineralized blocks from hole to hole despite the proximity of the holes. The fact that the mineralized zones are not similar indicates a good potential for the presence of a large Carlin-type gold system. The grade also support that. The two holes that have intersection 284 to 309 m of 2.25 to 2.5 g/T is also encouraging that the gold system is large, and perhaps bulk-mineable, if the metallurgy is supportive.

Your statement about a shear zone is not applicable for most Carlin Type gold systems. Carlin type gold systems develop within larger 4.8 to 8.4 km-wide gold belts in Nevada and Utah, and elsewhere throughout the world, whose origins are related to extensional faulting, fracturing, and jointing, and proximity to intrusive complexes. The gold belts range from 300 to 700 km in minimum lengths. They do not develop in shear zones like the greenstone belts of the Yilgarn block in Australia, the greenstone belt shear zones in South America or the Ashanti gold belt in Ghana, in northwestern Africa. Even those were originally developed in extensional environments and later folded into thicker packages due to shearing.

A good example of a Carlin gold system is grade over significant width. The large Betze-post gold system is about 50 meters wide but has grades in excess of 0.2 ounces per ton gold. This is not a wide system but, in total, carries close to 40 million ounces of gold. The Meikle mine, another Carlin Type gold system contains 8 million ounces in an intersection zone, made up from two intersecting fault zones with widths of 15 to 25 meters wide. The newly discovered Cortez gold system is similar to Betze in that it will ultimately provide about 25 million ounces.

We continue to drill across the mineralized gold systems at Santa Fe. So far it looks like a big system, but only further drilling will answer the question of "how big is it?". If Santa Fe is drilled and proves to be big, then the number of ounces will be significant. The intercept of 11.3 meters at a grade of 11.46 g/T is encouraging that the potential for high-grade gold zones is high, and that zones of high-grade may be mined at depth. Alternatively, the low grade thicknesses of 100 to 350 meters may yield a bulk-mineable gold system.

http://www.vitgoldcorp.com/index.cfm?pagepath=Projects/Santa_Fe_Nevada/Santa_Fe_Questions_Answers&id=18903