Wide-spaced pathfinder air-core drilling by mineral explorer, Kairos Minerals has intercepted anomalous gold and lithium at its Kangan project in the Pilbara region of Western Australia, just 20 kilometres south of De Grey Mining’s spectacular 6.8 million ounce Hemi gold discovery. A 3,000 metre infill aircore campaign is now planned for later this month to follow-up on the encouraging results.
Four shallow holes from first-pass drilling returned elevated gold mineralisation grading more than 0.1 g/t gold.
Air-core drilling, a glorified form of soil sampling often used as a pathfinder to refine targets for follow-up, was conducted at Kangan on wide line spacings ranging between 200m and 600m.
Kairos believes the promising results from wide-spaced reconnaissance drilling show potential for a large gold target that could be lurking at depth in bedrock beneath the drill lines.
Notably, three of the mineralised holes lie near a 3km long north-south trending structure akin to large regional structures adjacent to Hemi. Kairos says the structure at Kangan has an orientation comparable to the Falcon intrusion at De Grey’s “world class” discovery.
Following the discovery at Hemi early last year, De Grey’s share price soared from about $0.04 in January to reach as high as $1.60 by September 2020.
Kairos says the early stage drilling intersected various intrusive lithologies, including mafic intrusions and a significant number of pegmatites. It believes the intercepted pegmatites could be related to the Split Rock supersuite granitic rocks in the Pilbara.
Lithium-rich pegmatites in the prolific Pilbara Craton have a spatial, geochemical and geochronological association with the Split Rock supersuites, the company says.
A total of five holes from the campaign returned anomalous lithium mineralisation, with one hole located just 1km from the interpreted contact between the Cleland and Split Rock supersuites.
Kairos Minerals Executive Chairman, Terry Topping, said:“We are very encouraged by the initial results of this wide-spaced air-core program at Kangan and subsequent soil sampling and mapping – both from a gold and a lithium perspective. The 5,454m program has returned significant anomalous gold values from initial testing of the large-scale gold target – an important outcome considering how widely spaced the holes were. With line spacing of 200m to 600m, there is potential for a significant gold deposit to be located in the bedrock somewhere beneath these drill lines. The location of significant anomalous gold adjacent to a major regional structure that bears strong similarities to the regional structure at Hemi, is an intriguing development.”
Kairos has also identified three high-priority lithium-caesium-tantalum, or “LCT” geochemical anomalies at its Kangan tenure that are sometimes known to host lithium bearing spodumene captured in pegmatites.
Many significant lithium deposits around the world, including the Greenbushes mine some 250km south of Perth in WA, are hosted within LCT pegmatites.
Kairos says the LCT anomalies at Kangan are spread over a 7km strike and are less than 30km from two of Australia’s most revered lithium deposits- Wodgina and Pigangoora.
ASX-listed Pilbara Minerals, with a market cap just shy of $7 billion, has defined 162Mt in ore reserves grading 1.2 per cent lithium oxide at its already producing Pilgangoora lithium-tantalum mine.
Some 20km further south-west lies Wodgina where a 259Mt resource going 1.17 per cent lithium oxide has been delineated.
Kairos now plans to conduct further mapping, drone surveys and rock chip sampling over its pegmatite targets at Kangan through to the end of the year.
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