"Nothing is ever perfect in this world, but NovaGold is coming back with even a stronger answer than any "purple prose" for the attention of all mining industry and investors involved. Drills will be turning very soon on the project again: "The 2020 exploration programme consists of about 80 holes, totalling 22,000 m, centred on the ACMA and Lewis resource areas."
"Vancouver, British Columbia – June 23, 2020: TNR Gold Corp. (TSX-V: TNR) (“TNR”, “TNR Gold” or the “Company”) is pleased to announce the close of the final tranche of the non-brokered private placement (the “Private Placement”) of up to 13,3333,333 units (each a “Unit”) announced on April 14, 2020 and May 21, 2020. On closing of the final tranche, the Company issued 3,400,000 Units at $0.03 per Unit for proceeds of $102,000. Each Unit consists of one common share of the Company and one non-transferable common share purchase warrant exercisable into one common share of the Company at an exercise price of $0.05 per share for five years from the date of issue.
The proceeds of the Private Placement will be used for exploration and maintenance of the Company’s projects in Alaska and Argentina, management consulting fees, office administration, regulatory fees, audit, legal and IT.
All Private Placement securities will be restricted from trading for a period of four months plus one day from the date of closing.
Kirill Klip, Executive Chairman of the Company and a non-arms’ length party, participated in this Private Placement. The issuance of private placement securities to non-arms’ length parties constitutes related-party transactions under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 – Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions (“MI 61-101”). Because the Company’s shares trade only on the TSX Venture Exchange, the issuance of securities is exempt from the formal valuation requirements of Section 5.4 of MI 61-101 pursuant to Subsection 5.5(b) of MI 61-101 and exempt from the minority approval requirements of Section 5.6 of MI 61-101 pursuant to Section 5.7(b). The Company did not file a material change report 21 days prior to the closing of the private placement as the details of the participation of insiders of the Company had not been confirmed at that time."
“We are not dreamers,” he says. “We did it with the copper. We did it with the lithium. I would like to make it even bigger with the gold. I would like to do better, to keep a 25% stake.”
It’s a vision for growth that makes a lot of sense. In tough markets, where capital is scarce, this kind of approach may well end up being a model that others choose to follow too."
Location has become the existential investment criteria for gold, says Kaplan
"The frontier spirit that sent gold investors into riskier hunting grounds is a bygone era and investors are “coming back home”, to jurisdictions where the rule of law is not a novelty, says US businessman Thomas Kaplan.
Kaplan is chairperson of NYSE American- and TSX-listed Novagold, which owns the multimillion-ounce Donlin Gold project, in Alaska, in an equal joint venture (JV) with Barrick Gold.
“Our belief is that the era of ‘go-where-the-gold-is’ mentality, that took me to South America, Africa and Asia is over,” said the seasoned gold investor, who had sought out rewarding opportunities all over the world, making his first fortune in Bolivia and his second in Zimbabwe and South Africa.
“I know what is going on in the developing world from an investor standpoint. I made my bones there,” Kaplan said in a conference call on Thursday, but stated that times had changed.
“The key is not just being able to acquire category-killer assets that give the greatest leverage to the underlying investment thesis – which was my mantra for 15-plus years – but in jurisdictions that will allow one to keep the fruits of that leverage.”
He described the recent developments in Papua New Guinea, where the government refused the Barrick and Zijin Mining JV a new lease for the Porgera mine as a “bad omen” for the mining industry.
“When you have the guts to nationalise Chinese assets, you really know that it is an inexorable trend.”
Some countries, like Zambia, are also designating gold as a national strategic resource that has to be exchanged for local currency.
Location, he said, had become the existential investment criterion for gold mining at a time when some countries are leaning towards nationalisation – both stealth and brazen.
“. . . the place where investors will be channelled, like salmon moving upstream, is in the great assets that are located in safe places,” said Kaplan.
“If it is not in a place where I can go gambling, or take my kids, like Las Vegas, or go swimming in the Great Barrier Reef, in Australia, or go whale watching or salmon fishing, in Alaska, I don’t think I want to make a career risk.”
He said that Donlin was located in one of the best jurisdictions.
Canadian think-tank, the Fraser Institute’s annual survey of mining companies, ranks Alaska as the fourth-most attractive jurisdiction for mining investment, after Western Australia, Finland and Nevada.
Alaska is already the second-largest gold producing state in the US. “They understand mining. They understand infrastructure and they understand making sure that there is access to it,” said Kaplan.
Novagold CEO Greg Lang added that, if Donlin was built today, it would be one of the world’s largest gold mines, producing an average of 1.1-million ounces a year over its 30-year mine life.
“There are few mines in the world, existing or proposed, that have that level of production.”
In fact, only three mines produced one-million ounces a year in 2019, said Lang. Of those, only one – Nevada Gold Mines – was in a safe jurisdiction. The others were in Russia and Uzbekistan, which the Fraser Institute did not rank.
Donlin has “extraordinary size and quality”, said Kaplan. The size of the resource at Donlin – at about 39-million ounces of gold in measured and indicated mineral resources – defines its rarity.
“Very few gold assets began production with a mine life measured in decades and, despite billions spent globally on gold exploration over the past decade, there have been very few discoveries of any consequence and Novagold believes none are anywhere comparable to Donlin.”
With an average measured and indicated resource grade of 2.24 g/t, the Donlin project has more than twice the industry average grade of 1.05 g/t.
Kaplan said that, if you consider the existential factor of where deposits were located, there were not that many assets to choose from. “We are going to be one of those go-to stocks. Whether you buy us at 8, or 9 or 18 or 19, 28 or 29, I believe that you are going to own us.”
Novagold closed at $8.59 a share on Thursday, giving the company a market capitalisation of $2.82-billion.
The company’s stock traded at about $12 a share in May, before a report by short-seller J Capital Research (JCAP) expressed doubt over the Donlin project. JCAP argues that the deposit is “so remote and technically challenging that the mine will never be built”.
At the time, Novagold and Kaplan issued lengthy responses to the JCAP report and said that that the company was assessing legal options available to it. 
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