Absolutely @kyngdominion its a great way to start off a project...

Absolutely @kyngdominion its a great way to start off a project like this with positive agreements between both TO groups. Yep I agree Agnico will be watching what happens from here on out.

Just for the benefit of any newcomers…the announcement made mention of the extensive inherited exploration dataset that comes along with this ground position. A dataset that was acquired over the past two decades…It is difficult to overstate the position this puts a seasoned explorer like S2 with highly prospective ground and early heavy lifting already partially completed.
The relinquishment report by Kirkland Lake for EL3539 (search GeoVIC)… which is basically the ground position now held by S2, is a good read to highlight what is now at their disposal. As an example it includes a 5,500 line-km airborne gravity gradiometry (Falcon) survey, then there is airborne magnetics-radiometrics-LiDAR-EM, ground based IP and seismic, soil geochemistry, mobile metal ion soils, reconnaissance AC drilling etc…..
The ‘value’ in straight acquisition cost alone is huge, but also time. Clearly, it’s a data portfolio that isn't replicable by a junior ex co, or at least not in entirety.
These are big ticket items, justifiable in a near-mine environment with a producing operation. The other notable point is most of it (other than a handful of RC and diamond holes) is designed for regional scale targeting….not direct tests of mineralisation.
No doubt S2 will also be bringing their own ideas to the ground, but having all of this to draw from is a huge head start…and we have already seen some of this put to use, with the reprocessed IP surveys a few months back.

The Kirkland lake relinquishment report also puts the past exploration in context….this ground has been explored under the ‘Fosterville Gold Mine’ banner for 24 years (since oxide production commenced in the early 1990’s). But, it’s been a revolving door of owners via half a dozen different mergers and acquisitions:
{Perseverance Corporation - Northgate Minerals - AuRico Gold – Crocodile Gold - Newmarket Gold - Kirkland Lake Gold, and now Agnico}
The disruption to exploration strategies, effectiveness, and momentum that comes with this constant change is potentially quite significant…

Then add the timing of Fosterville’s transformation into the mix…the Swan Zone wasn’t discovered until 2016/17…and the significance of this didn’t start to flow through until Dec17 and then in a big way Dec18 with reserves jumping from 0.5 M ozs @ 9.8 g/t Au in De16 to 2.7 M Oz @ 31 g/t Au in Dec18….and this coincides with being forced to hand back the keys for EL3539 (the ground S2 now has) just as the potential of the geology was being realised.
“EL3539 was relinquished due to the license reaching the maximum allowable number of renewals under current regulatory provisions.”
So, this relinquishment timing relative to reserves and oz’s produced really puts it in perspective:


With production tailing off as Swan Zone is mined out, this adds pressure to get new areas drilled and converted. I think we’ve already seen this be put in motion with significant capital investment in the Robins Hill Decline and extensive surface and underground drilling on the Robins Hill and Curie Zones.



This puts S2 in a unique position imo, should be interesting times ahead...GLAH.