Junior gold explorer Aurum Resources has finished a maiden 18-hole drill program at its prospective Penny South gold project. The company is chasing targets with distinct similarities to its neighbours, the well-endowed Penny West historical mine and the ever-expanding Ramelius Resources’ owned Penny North deposit. Despite some drilling delays Aurum hit numerous prospective shear zones with sulphides and quartz veining that it plans to send for priority assay.
The program took six and a half weeks for an aggregate 3,610 metres of RC drilling across 18 structural targets.
A total of six holes intersected the targeted sulphide bearing shear zone with samples from each making the priority assay list for gold analysis. Four metre composite samples are currently being prepared for shipment to Minanalytical laboratory services in Perth where they will undergo photon assaying for gold.
Photon assaying is a nationally accredited, non-destructive technique using high energy x-rays to analyse the samples and boasts remarkably faster turnaround times than traditional fire assay analysis.
All drillholes displayed trace levels of sulphides except for the initial hole with many of the sulphides located at or near contacts between lithologies and associated alteration zones.
The maiden drill program began just over a month after Aurum listed on the ASX in December 2021. The listing was a spin-off of nickel-copper-lithium explorer Aldoro Resources’ gold assets so it could focus its attention more diligently on the Penny South project, that despite showing some cracking hits were inexplicably never followed up.
Surprisingly Aurum’s Penny South project has seen little historical drilling despite some solid historic gold hits including 2m grading 33.98 grams per tonne gold, 6m grading 1.27 g/t gold and 5m grading 1.11 g/t gold. Importantly, the company considers much of the historical drilling in the area to be inefficient with the majority of exploration reaching less than 40m down hole.
Penny South sits on the same shear structure as the Penny North deposit that Ramelius Resources’ paid Spectrum Resources around $400 million to acquire in both cash and stocks.
Ramelius remains eager to transition its high-grade Penny North into production. The project houses some 230,000 ounces of gold going an impressive 15 grams per tonne gold.
The historic Penny West open pit mine was no slouch in its day either producing approximately 154,000 tonnes grading 18 grams per tonne gold for 89,000 ounces from 1990-1991.
When you have a historic mine at Penny West that produced gold from an open pit at 18 g/t situated less than 800m away in addition to a top-tier gold producer like Ramelius Resources’ constructing an underground decline from that same pit to get access to a deposit with a head grade of 15 g/t gold at Penny North – it’s understandable why Aurum was quick off the mark to get drilling at Penny South. Now to wait for some assays.
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By Matt Birney
