In times of world woe, gold has invariably become a historic haven for investors – and global central banks – looking to find a bit of shimmering yellow light in the pervading gloom.
And it seems that theory is still living large today, with the gold price rocketing skyward in the face of bloody conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East and on the back of the global coronavirus pandemic. Late in January 2022, just before Russia announced a “special military operation” in Ukraine, the gold price sat at about $2685 an ounce, while today’s value is hovering near the $3579 mark – a jump of more than 33 per cent.
It means the globe’s gold hunters and producers are looking at bottom lines bulging more than they could have imagined and big drill hits are becoming manna from heaven. So, it is no real surprise that this week’s edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits is dominated by quality gold finds.
Golden Range project – Western Australia’s Murchison region
Hit: 14.49g/t gold from 188m
Warriedar Resources brightened the start of this week with a reverse-circulation (RC) drill hit of 4m at 14.49 grams per tonne gold from 188m from its Ricciardo gold deposit within the company’s Golden Range project in Western Australia’s Murchison region.
Management confirmed the launch of its 2024 drilling activities on February 28, outlining 3000m of RC work at Ricciardo aimed at extending known high-grade shoots and adding high-grade ounces, in addition to step-out drilling to test for interpreted new high-grade shoots.
It was all in a bid to improve its confidence in a mineral resource estimate for Ricciardo of 8.7 million tonnes at 1.7g/t gold for a contained 476,000 ounces. And the plan is clearly starting to bear fruit.
The southern bookend to the Golden Range project is the historic Rothsay mine, just a few kilometres south of and on strike from Warriedar’s ground. The northern bookend is 29Metals’ world-class Golden Grove mine and processing mill, along with its 128.3-million-tonne volcanogenic-hosted massive sulphide (VHMS) resource.
Most significantly, Golden Grove’s host sequence continues south straight into Warriedar’s ground, which it acquired from DC Mines in mid-February last year.
The 804-square-kilometre acquisition came with a mineral resource estimate of 19.2 million tonnes at 1.5g/t gold for 945,000 ounces, so the company instantly doubled its total resource position to just under 2 million ounces. The company also picked up the operation’s mine infrastructure, comprising an 800,000 tonne per annum plant, 156-man camp, ancillary facilities and grid power.
Warriedar is clearly following a strategy known in the mining industry as, “exploring in the shadow of the headframe”, with decades of historic data assisting in orientation. It is a simple, proven strategy that could at times also be called, “standing on the shoulders of giants”.
Garden Gully project – Meekatharra, Western Australia
Hit: 6m at 28.8g/t gold from 163m
With regal trumpets blaring, Ora Gold proclaimed that it had nailed significant gold intercepts in RC drilling in the south-eastern zone of its Crown Prince prospect, 16km north/north-west of Meekatharra in WA.
The best intersection jagged 6m at 28.8g/t gold from 163m depth including 2m at a mouth-watering 76.62g/t gold from 164m, with the mineralisation remaining open at depth and which the company says it will follow up.
The intercept is at the eastern end of the current modelled resource and potentially either extends the resource further down-dip, or improves the existing resource grade – or both. It is also supported by another recent hole up-dip that intersected 15m going 9.91g/t gold from 88m including 2m going 54.17g/t gold.
Crown Prince, part of Ora’s Garden Gully gold project, is one of at least nine targets the company has identified in its 677-square-kilometre tenure within the Abbotts greenstone belt and is the most advanced and nearing mine development.
The company has been exploring the belt since 2022 after its evaluations of geological and geophysical data homed in on the importance of the Abernethy Shear – a deep crustal structure and one of the best-defined mineralised structures in the entire belt.
The Abernethy Shear is completely obscured by transported cover but has been defined over a strike of more than 7km by various explorers including WMC Resources, Tantalum Australia, Australian Gold Mines, Accent Resources and more recently Doray Minerals.
Ora is continuing its resource development at Crown Prince, with high grades persisting while new mineralised zones are being systematically drilled out in sufficient detail to be included in an updated resource estimate that is due for completion in the middle of the September quarter.
AUSTRALIAN GOLD AND COPPER
Southern Cobar project – Lake Cargelligo, New South Wales
Hit: 5m at 16.9g/t gold, 1,473g/t silver and 15.0 per cent lead and zinc from 112m
Australian Gold and Copper woke from a trading halt slumber on Wednesday morning to boldly punt its share price from just 12c to 34.5c – a jump of more than 187 per cent – on news of “outstanding” gold and silver hits from its Achilles prospect in the South Cobar region of New South Wales.
The hits came in a nine-hole, 1461m follow-up RC drilling program in massive gold-silver-base metal sulphides, with 5m at 16.9g/t gold, 1473g/t silver and 15 per cent lead and zinc from 112m and 3m at 19g/t silver and 19.5 per cent lead and zinc from 139m in a mineralised 43m-wide intercept going 2.2g/t gold, 196g/t silver and 3.6 per cent lead and zinc from 99m.
Interestingly, a 3000g/t silver preliminary assay exceeded local laboratory instrument limits and the sample material was sent to a Canadian specialist laboratory for gravimetric assay.
The drilling followed up the results of a 26.4-line-kilometre induced-polarisation (IP) geophysical survey that defined two big zones of strong chargeability in the north and south of the Achilles survey grid.
Results mid-last month from the initial drilling of 10 holes for 1596m at Achilles targeted shallow, high-grade gold-silver-base metal mineralisation extending across at least 250m of strike in three holes, with high-grade mineralisation open in every direction and at depth. The results of that work prompted the latest follow-up program.
A $200,000 NSW Government drilling grant was awarded in December 2021 and will contribute to future Achilles drilling, while similar exploration is being undertaken at the company’s Hilltop copper-gold-lead-zinc target, about 25km to the south.
IP geophysics has been instrumental in recent high-profile discoveries such as Aurelia Metals’ Federation deposit and Carnaby Resources’ Greater Duchess copper-gold project.
Colosseum Gold Mine – California, United States
Hit: 104.7m at 3.65g/t gold from 77.23m
Things seem to be really happening for Dateline Resources in the good, old US of A.
The New South Wales-based company rattled the grapevine on March 12 when it confirmed it was sending an RC rig to its Colosseum gold mine in California to expand its program by an extra 10 drillholes, while a diamond-core rig continued to plunge deeper holes into a breccia pipe.
Then on Thursday last week, management revealed that the infill and extensional drilling in the south pit of its Colosseum mine produced stunning high-grade results with a headline 104.7m at 3.65g/t gold from 77.23m including 12.2m going 8.4g/t gold from 108.81m and a separate run of 12.8m going 2.18g/t gold from 208.17m.
Dateline picked up the historic Colosseum mine from Barrick Gold in March 2021. The mine produced about 344,000 ounces of gold between 1988 and 1993 from a historically-calculated mining reserve of 700,000 ounces.
Since then, drilling has produced a steady stream of big hits including 70.1m at 6.53g/t gold in a diamond drill hole including 25.9m at 15.31g/t gold in February this year. An April hit reported as “exceptional” from another diamond hole gave up 88m going 4.18g/t gold including 22.8m at 8.17g/t gold.
Just a month earlier, the company said it was refining its understandings of correlations between gold and a suite of alteration-associated trace elements, enabling it to determine the proximity of drillholes to zones of higher grade and/or continuity.
The geochemical approach being applied in the mine environment has also prompted Dateline to undertake more extensive regional reconnaissance auger drill geochemical sampling across its greater claims area. And that could make this space one worth watching.
Corvette project – Quebec, Canada
Hit: 122.5m at 1.42 per cent lithium oxide from 148.7m
With a gold price operating at record highs, lithium has taken a little hiatus out of the spotlight … but many critics and analysts around the world are thinking that might not be for too much longer.
And explorers such as Patriot Battery Metals are doing their best to find their way back to centre stage. Ongoing drilling of Patriot’s giant “CV5” lithium pegmatite at its Corvette project in Quebec this week jagged two blistering intercepts of 122.5m at 1.42 per cent lithium oxide from 148.7m, supported by a second-best intercept 500m further along strike to the north-east that assayed 71.4m at 1.57 per cent.
The extensive campaign, including 20 diamond holes completed in Canada’s 2024 winter drilling season, has embraced about 4.6km of the strike of the CV5 pegmatite, which remains open at both ends.
Management expects to complete its mineral resource estimate for Corvette in this year’s third quarter. It will include results from both the CV5 and recently-discovered lithium-mineralised CV13 pegmatite.
The CV5 pegmatite contains the company’s maiden mineral resource estimate of an inferred 109.2 million tonnes at 1.42 per cent lithium oxide. And with eight distinct clusters of big lithium pegmatites identified within its Corvette ground, Patriot is not short of targets.
So, once initial mining reserves can be established and rigs can be spared from more intense resource definition work, an ongoing program of testing each of the pegmatites can begin to establish a pipeline of resources.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
