Probe Metals Inc. on Feb. 20 announced an updated resource estimate for its Val-d'Or East gold project in Quebec.

The property hosts indicated resources containing 682,400 ounces of gold within 9 million tonnes grading an average 2.35 g/t of gold, which includes 535,900 ounces in open pit resources and 146,500 ounces in underground resources.

Inferred resources are estimated to contain 722,100 ounces of gold within 9.3 million tonnes grading 2.41 g/t of gold, including 247,400 ounces in open pit resources and 474,700 ounces in underground resources.

Probe Metals said the majority of the resource is now hosted within the central New Beliveau deposit, which hosts 600,000 ounces of gold in the indicated category and 531,500 ounces of gold in the inferred category.

The estimate uses cutoff grades of 0.5 g/t of gold for open pit material and 1.95 g/t of gold for underground material, which was calculated using a gold price of US$1,316 per troy ounce. The update incorporates data from 210,163 meters of drilling.

The previous estimate, completed in November 2012, comprised inferred resources containing 770,000 ounces of gold within 9.1 million tonnes at 2.63 g/t of gold using cutoffs of 1 g/t of gold for material above a depth of 350 meters and 1.5 g/t of gold for mineralization below 350 meters.

The deposits remain open in all directions, and the company said five drill rigs will be active on the property in 2018 to focus on further expansion and discovery.