Moneta Porcupine Mines Inc. said Jan. 17 that an updated estimate increased the gold grade of resources at its Golden Highway project in Ontario, while tonnage dropped significantly.

The project hosts indicated resources containing 383,400 ounces of gold within 2.6 million tonnes grading 4.61 g/t gold and inferred resources containing 873,200 ounces of gold within 6.5 million tonnes grading 4.21 g/t gold.

The new estimate used a cutoff of 3.0 g/t gold and incorporated a new geological interpretation of the deposit, where mineralization remains open.

The previous estimate, completed in 2012, defined indicated and inferred resources containing 4.3 million ounces of gold within 114.4 million tonnes grading an average 1.17 g/t gold.

Moneta Porcupine noted that the updated analysis assumed underground mining, while previous estimates were designed for large open pit extraction and were not geologically constrained.