In January 2026, StrikePoint Gold was closing a small, unrelated deal with Newmont over old Hercules-project claims in Nevada — and one offhand question at the end of that call became the company's new flagship asset.
Mike Allen, President and CEO of StrikePoint Gold, told Trevor Hall on Mining Stock Daily that as the Newmont deal wrapped, he asked on the spot whether the Northumberland gold project might also be for sale — a deposit sitting outside Nevada Gold Mines, Newmont and Barrick's joint operating venture, purely by accident of timing.
"In January of 2026, StrikePoint started to do a deal with Newmont on... our old Hercules project... I turned around and asked the guy, well, what about Northumberland?" — Mike Allen
Mike has run StrikePoint since before the deal and moved fast on it because he and now-chairman Alan Pangbourne, a former COO of Silver Standard, each had history with the Carlin-style deposit, which carries nearly 200 kilometers of historical drilling across 544 holes.
The full interview is covered here so you can skip it. 31 minutes of audio, 7 minutes of reading.
Here are the 6 takeaways that matter.
Mining Stock Daily · Oct 26, 2026 · 31m · 24m saved
With Mike Allen, President and CEO of StrikePoint Gold
Key Takeaways
One offhand question — "what about Northumberland?" — started the entire acquisition, asked as an unrelated Newmont deal was wrapping up in January 2026
Northumberland sat outside the Newmont-Barrick Nevada Gold Mines joint venture for about 15 years purely because it was never folded in, despite nearly 200 kilometers of historical drilling
A 2006 report flagged "transitional" ore that a former Newmont metallurgist says didn't even exist as a defined category when the project was last studied
Transitional material behaves like oxide in a mill, potentially enabling a low-capex starter pit
Institutional pushback grew the financing from a C$140M bought deal to C$190M, on investor concerns the smaller raise wouldn't leave the company well-financed
StrikePoint is targeting a PEA in 2028, but Mike says it could slip if drilling results are strong enough to prioritize growing the resource over finalizing the economics
Asked about the company's top risk, Mike named people, not geology or metallurgy — hiring enough geologists, consultants and drillers in a busy district
1. An Accidental Deal
The Northumberland acquisition didn't start as a search. It fell out of a different transaction entirely.
A routine Newmont deal on old Hercules claims is where the Northumberland deal actually began
"In January of 2026, StrikePoint started to do a deal with Newmont on... our old Hercules project... I turned around and asked the guy, well, what about Northumberland?" — Mike Allen
The Newmont contact confirmed Northumberland was indeed coming out of the portfolio as part of its continuing divestment of non-core Nevada assets — the spark, Mike said, for everything that followed.
