State OK to be sought for mine in Nye County

Royal Standard Minerals, a Sparks-based

mining company, is near to filing an application

for a state environmental permit on

its Gold Wedge property in Nye County.

If the permit is approved the state has

six months to make a decision Royal

Standard hopes to begin a $1.3 million program

to obtain a 10,000-pound bulk sample

from the property.

Ultimately, the company plans to operate

a shallow underground mine at

Gold Wedge.

Roland Larsen, the company's president

and chief executive officer, said last week

that the company has arranged the capital

to meet the demands of the next phase of

developing the property, but he declined to

discuss the details. In published reports,

Larsen has said he hopes to finance the

project with debt to avoid dilution of the

company's common stock. (The stock

trades on the Canadian Ventures Exchange

and through the over-the-counter bulletin

board system in the United States. Its

recent price of 22 cents a share is near the

middle of its 52-week range.)

Royal Standard owns 100 percent of the

Gold Wedge property.

Assuming the state grants its permission

and the cash is in place, the mine planned

by Royal Standard Minerals would be less

than 1,000 feet deep.

Larsen described the Gold Wedge project

as small and said that befits the small

size of Royal Standard Minerals.

The company reported net income of

$295,648 on operating revenue of

$10,332 in the fiscal year ended Jan. 31.

It was profitable only because it recovered

$476,594 from Sharpe Resources

Corp. That money had been advanced to

Sharpe, which the company describes in

regulatory filings as a related company

because it shares management with Royal

Standard, written off and then repaid.

In the previous fiscal year, the company

lost $2.6 million on revenues of $8,282.

At Gold Wedge, 57 drill holes showed

proven or probable

reserves of

200,000 ounces

of gold on the

property and

another 500,000

ounces of possible gold

ore, Royal Standard

has said.

The company reported, meanwhile,

that a new study by consulting

geologist Lawrence Martin estimates

a current potential resource of

546,000 ounces of gold on the property.

The Gold Wedge property is part of

the Manhattan mining district, which

has produced about 1 million ounces of

gold since 1905.

Recent exploration in the area by major

companies such as Freeport Gold and Echo

Bay Mines has focused on possible open-pit

mines rather than the underground facilities

being studied by Royal Standard.

In the Carlin trend of northeast

Nevada, meanwhile, Royal Standard has

been acquiring claims to expand its

Pinon-Rain project.

Royal Standard said it bought out a 30

percent interest held by Crown

Resources in the project and now holds a

1 0 0

p e r c e n t

i n t e r e s t .

Royal Standard

paid 1 million

shares of its common to

Crown Resources and also agreed to

place its name on reclamation bonds that

were the responsibility of Crown.

With its acquisition of 608 unpatented

claims and 19 patented claims on the

southern end of the Carlin Trend region,

Royal Standard said the project now

encompasses more than 16,000 acres. The

company is evaluating the property for

open-pit mining.