WA Gold Limited has wasted little time turning its attention back to the drill bit after mapping out a low-capital pathway for its Abercromby gold project near Wiluna, with the company now lining up multiple priority gold targets at Bullabulling near Coolgardie in WA.
In April, WA Gold said a scoping study for its Abercromby project had pointed to a stage one mining case with $8M in upfront capital, forecast pre-tax free cash flow of $270M and a pre-tax net present value of $229M, underlining the company’s broader ambition to build value across a portfolio of WA gold assets.
Today’s update shifts the focus to Bullabulling, where a detailed targeting review by consulting group Resource Potentials has identified a string of walk-up opportunities across the company’s separate North, West and East tenement blocks, ahead of drilling set to start this month.
At Bullabulling North, the review highlighted what WA Gold believes is the northern continuation of the Bullabulling Shear Zone, the same structural corridor tied to the four-million-ounce Bullabulling gold mine 10km south of the company’s northernmost block.
WA Gold says the structure appears to run north beneath shallow cover into its own tenure, where previous drilling has been patchy, leaving key ground effectively untested.
One of the more intriguing prospective indications is a historic end-of-hole intercept recorded by Resolute Resources in 1996. That hole delivered five metres at 0.12 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 40m depth in a drillhole collared on the western margin of the interpreted Bullabulling Shear Zone target.
That result has never been followed up with any known drilling further east into what was believed to be the key target position in the core of the shear corridor, within 1km of the old hole.
WA Gold Limited chief executive officer Ben Pollard said: “With the Abercromby gold deposit progressing toward development, our Bullabulling project presents an advanced exploration opportunity with significant exploration potential where there have been large gaps in drilling on key gold-bearing structures sitting below regolith cover.”
Resource Potentials has also identified a sheared contact along the margins of a broad ultramafic unit on the eastern side of the Bullabulling North ground, where surface and drilling geochemistry have hinted at widespread gold anomalism.
In the western part of the Bullabulling North tenure, WA Gold says geochemical and geophysical anomalies also line up along favourable contacts and structures, which could represent Bullabulling mine-style repetitions within its own ground.
To further refine its targeting, WA Gold has appointed GAP Geophysics to run a sub-audio magnetics (SAM) survey over parts of the Bullabulling Shear Zone and its interpreted under-cover extensions.
The survey is expected to map subsurface structural and lithological trends that could indicate structures or rock units hosting gold mineralisation, ahead of drill planning throughout the year.
With its Bullabulling drilling about to kick off and extra Programs of Work lodged to support up to 10,000m of follow-up drilling, WA Gold has set itself a sizeable task in a target-rich hunting ground across one of WA’s better-known gold localities.
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By Doug Bright
