Askari Metals’ share price surged by more than 63 per cent today, marking its highest trading volume in more than a month.
The spike followed news released this morning that the company’s strategic review of its 100 per cent-owned Mt Maguire gold project in Western Australia’s Ashburton region has revealed historic high-grade gold intercepts including 2m at 12.14 grams per tonne from 35m and a broader 31m at 0.84g/t from 20m.
The project, 10km south of Paraburdoo and 200km west of Newman, has remained mostly unexplored at depth and along strike, with historical results from 107 drillholes dating back 20 years averaging just 40m in depth. As well as the drilling data, Askari has also had the opportunity to review 1351 soil, rock-chip and stream sediment samples from work previously conducted across the area.
Some of the other hits at the time included 6m running at 2.08g/t from 23m, 2m grading 5.62g/t from 24m, 2m at 3.51g/t from 38m and 1m at 3.84g/t from 33m.
The company, in examining the geological setting, also highlighted an 8km stretch of an untested shear zone that shares a striking similarity to the neighbouring Ashburton project, which is owned by Kalamazoo Resources and hosts a resource of 16.2 million tonnes at 2.8g/t gold for a total of 1.44 million ounces.
Askari Metals managing director Gino D'Anna said: “The Mt Maguire project has surprised me with the numerous high-grade gold intercepts at near surface that have been largely untouched since the 1990s. Geological review work by our technical team has identified a number of walk-up drill targets with excellent potential to yield a substantial gold resource”.
In addition to the desktop studies, the company has taken the opportunity to not only to purchase geophysical information – which is being processed and interpreted – but also collect 450 new soil samples across the high-priority prospects, Murphy’s and Caffrey’s. However, the main focus is on a third target called the Guiness prospect, which lies to the south of its tenement package.
Previous drilling at Guinness uncovered gold just below the surface, beneath a 20m-by-70m zone of altered rock marked by intense silicification and bleaching. The alteration is so strong that the original basalt rock can only be identified by small, round silica formations in a fine sandy matrix, which likely indicates the top of ancient lava flows.
Importantly, however, the eastern and western extensions of the Guinness prospect remain unexplored. While sulphides and silicification are key to any discovery, the exact type of mineralisation will not be confirmed until further drilling is conducted once results of the fresh geochemical data and geophysical analysis are known.
Askari says it has recently resolved tenement access issues that had previously limited its on-ground exploration and it can now push forward with exploration efforts to determine the full extent of the mineralisation.
In addition to the company’s gold exploration efforts in in WA and New South Wales – covering five projects, including Mt Maguire – it also has its hands full with the Red Peak rare earths project and a lithium prospect in the Eastern Pilbara. Further afield, it also owns the promising Uis lithium project in Namibia, where 120 individual pegmatites have been mapped out and sampled ready for further work.
As Askari moves forward, its technical team will be analysing all the historical geophysical data in a bid to home in on exploration targets, with plans for systematic drilling to assess the project's potential. Given the price of gold, which is sitting just shy of all-time highs at US$2653 (AU$3872) per ounce, the timing of the strategic review appears spot on.
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By James Pearson
