King River Resources is set to kick off a new reverse-circulation (RC) drill campaign at its Tennant Creek East project in the Northern Territory as part of a $2 million commitment to hunt for high-grade copper-gold this year.
The company says drilling will target its promising Commitment, Langrenus and Providence prospects, which are all in proximity to several head-turning copper-gold drill intersections recorded in recent years in the highly-regarded Tennant Creek region.
King River has revealed several new geophysical targets at its Langrenus prospect that was formerly known as the Lone Star trend.
The company says many targets were generated from its extensive geophysics program last year, including at its Tennant Creek East, Rover East, Kurundi and Barkly projects. The targets sit along strike from several geophysical and geological trends.
Known high-grade copper-gold deposits in the region include Rover, Bluebird and Mauretania.
King River has chosen the Tennant Creek East project to be first cab off the rank for this year’s drill campaign as it hunts the high-grade copper-gold that has been commonly found in the area.
Management plans to launch the RC drill program next week, with testing starting at the Commitment area where four RC holes are planned for 800m. It is expected to be followed by the Langrenus area for 10 holes totalling 1500m of drilling.
The RC rig will then move to the Providence area to follow up on last year’s drilling which discovered ironstone alteration and structure associated with several geophysical anomalies.
King River Resources chairman Tony Barton said: “Our Tennant Creek program is a process of targeting interesting anomalies along strike, or close nearby, previously mined or identified high-grade gold and copper mineralisation. This is a classic wildcat type of drill program over this highly-prospective area, where the more holes we drill, the higher the chances must be to hit something of importance.”
Barton also said the company’s budgets are costed to allow for about 20,000m of drilling, covering many targets during the next 12 to 15 months.
King River’s Commitment target is 4km north-west of Tennant Minerals' Bluebird deposit where recent results returned a diamond-drill intersection of 61.8m going 2.3 per cent copper including 6.85m at an eye-watering 17 per cent in a massive sulphide zone.
The Bluebird deposit also produced results of 63m at 2.1 per cent copper and 4.6 grams per tonne gold from 153m, including 27.55m going 3.6 per cent copper and 10g/t gold and 7m at 38.5g/t gold.
The drilling at Commitment will home in on new geophysical targets based on several gravity and magnetic anomalies associated with geochemically-anomalous ironstone discovered in 2020.
The company’s Langrenus target is 700m along strike of the Hopeful Star historic workings and 1km along strike from Emmerson Resources’ Mauretania prospect where it recorded a stunning drill result of 20m at 38.5g/t gold in a diamond drillhole. Mauretania has reported a gold mineral resource of 256,216 tonnes at 3.5g/t for 28,974 ounces and it is said to remain open and unexplored at depth.
King River says the Mauretania-Hopeful Star trend extends onto its tenement and can be seen in detailed gravity and magnetic work.
Emmerson’s nearby Hermitage prospect also produced a coffee-spitting intersection of 116m at 3.4 per cent copper and 0.88g/t gold – rated one of the drill hits of the year in 2021. Three priority target areas have been identified for drill-testing at Langrenus, with a total of eight holes for 1500m proposed.
Target 1 is just 700m from the Hopeful Star historical mine on the Mauretania trend. Geophysical work last year identified a continuous chargeability anomaly parallel to the mineralised trend.
Previous drilling conducted by the company to the north of the anomaly did not test the newly-identified target.
Target 2 is another geophysical chargeability anomaly coincident with a significant gravity anomaly down-plunge of a previous company drillhole that intersected a broad geochemically-anomalous zone of fracturing, veining and ironstone alteration.
Target 3 is a further coincident chargeability and gravity anomaly close to the intersection of two north-east gravity trends.
Assays results from about 1700 samples are still pending from the Providence drilling and the company expects to generate further drill targets as the processing and interpretation of the geophysical results continue.
As priority targets are generated, further work will be proposed with a total of 13,500m of RC drilling to be allocated to priority targets for this year.
With a swag of targets to test this year in an area known for producing massive copper-gold drill hits, it may be a game-changing year for King River.
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By Craig Nolan
