Delecta Limited has joined the hunt for gold in the United States, picking up the Speedway gold project in Utah. The company’s latest acquisition is situated in the Great Basin district which hosts a plethora of world-class gold deposits across the revered Getchell-Comstock, Battle Mountain and Carlin gold trends. The Basin boasts a total endowment of more than 200 million ounces of gold.
Speedway is located just 40 kilometres south east of the 2.3-million-ounce Long Canyon gold mine, with the project tenure covering more than 4km of prospective stratigraphy. The company’s target at Speedway is fine-grained ‘Carlin-style’ gold mineralisation, with Delecta’s initial sampling at over the project having already confirmed the presence of outcropping mineralisation.
First-pass sampling by Delecta has returned assays of more than 1,200 parts per billion gold with anomalous levels of silver, arsenic and antimony also present which is typical of the coveted Carlin-style of mineralisation.
Delecta Managing Director, Malcolm Day said:“The (Speedway) acquisition ticks all our boxes from an acquisition criteria perspective, representing the culmination of a significant period of due diligence by the Company and its consultants to identify and acquire a gold project in a tier-1 location that has significant upside exploration potential.”
“This transaction delivers compelling benefits to our shareholders; a low entry cost gold project with exploration upside that has the potential to meet our strategic goals of identifying a multi-million-ounce gold deposit.”
“With an exploration program imminent to identify first-pass drilling targets, we are excited by the opportunity to explore for our own elephant size gold deposit in what is undoubtably in the handful of top gold producing gold regions globally.”
The Speedway gold project is situated in the western United States, in the state of Utah adjacent to the Utah-Nevada state line and around 180km west of Salt Lake City. The project tenure consists of 73 mining claims which stretch across more than 4km of strike and cover over 10 square kilometres. The tenure extends across a sequence of carbonate sediments which show marked similarities to the geological environment that hosts the revered Long Canyon gold deposit.
Delecta joins a growing band of ASX-listed explorers in the western United States, with Oakdale Resources drilling to the east at Lambarson Canyon in Nevada while Hawkstone Mining’s Western Desert gold-copper project sits to the north of the company’s Speedway tenure.
The company’s initial review of the exploration data indicates much of the previous exploration has been guided by geophysical targeting rather than surface geochemistry representing a significant opportunity for the company to apply modern exploration techniques and Australian “know how” to the gold-bearing terrane.
Whilst there is no requirement under US law to report historical exploration, the current owners of Speedway have managed to acquire much of the data relating to work undertaken by the previous owners. The cache has delivered Delecta a comprehensive database of geochemical and geophysical data, including more than 800 rock chip samples and several deep drill holes.
Initial exploration at Speedway will likely focus on gaining an understanding of the structural architecture of the region through the interpretation of the existing geophysical data sets. Delecta will also commence mapping of the various gold-bearing outcrops and breccias in the region, with follow-up, systematic surface sampling being used to help delineate additional drill targets across the project area.
Delecta’s initial exploration at Speedway has already borne fruit with rock chipping of key outcrops returning anomalous assays including 1.24 g/t gold from jasperoidal breccias and 43.8 g/t silver from fractured limestones, providing a significant incentive to kick the work program up a notch during the coming field season.
The company will pay the vendors, Goldplay LLC an initial option fee of US$50,000 upon signing of the purchase agreement, with subsequent annual payments due following the third anniversary of commencement. Delecta can move to 100 per cent ownership of the project at any time by making a one-off payment of US$3 million, with the vendors retaining a 2 per cent net smelter royalty on any future production.
With Delecta already holding a suite of uranium projects in Colorado, the company has expanded its footprint in the western United States and looks set to open up exploration on a second front. The company expects to kick off work at Speedway in the coming weeks and with gold bubbling along at US$1,850 an ounce, it will be all hands-on deck for Delecta in its hunt for next multi-million ounce gold deposit in the US.
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