Aurum gears up for WA gold drilling onslaught

ASX newcomer, Aurum Resources is getting set for a gold drilling blitz on two fronts in Western Australia early in the new year. The explorer has slated up to 6,000 metres of RC drilling at its Penny South project that sits adjacent to Ramelius Resources’ Penny North deposit where 306,800 ounces at a remarkable 16.8 grams per tonne gold have been defined.

Another 80 aircore holes for between 3,000m and 4,000m of drilling are planned at its Ryan’s Find project located to the north-east of Southern Cross.

The drilling barrage marks the start of Aurum’s exploration endeavours after it recently pocketed $5 million in an oversubscribed initial public offering for its listing on the bourse.

At Penny South, the company is targeting two priority areas showing geological similarities to Penny North and the historical Penny West mine, held by Ramelius Resources. An open pit operation at Penny West in the 1990s churned out about 89,000 ounces of gold at a cracking 18 g/t and Ramelius recently paid Spectrum Resources some hundreds of millions of dollars for Penny North.

Aurum believes the structures that host the gold mineralisation at both of Ramelius’ projects could also be present at Penny South.

The high-grade mineralisation at Penny West and Penny North is associated with the sheared contacts between mafic and granodiorite rocks and quartz veining, according to Aurum. Management says similar contacts appear at Penny South.

Notably, historical drilling at Penny South returned several intriguing gold strikes including a bumper grade 2m interval going 33.89 g/t gold from 38m. Another hole intercepted 4m at 2.1 g/t gold from 92m.

Aurum says shallow historical drilling at the project, averaging about 40m depth, could have missed gold mineralisation lurking at deeper levels. Interestingly, mineralisation at the nearby Penny North deposit starts at about 80m below surface.

At Ryan’s Find, aircore drilling will target a gold-in-soil anomaly previously outlined at one tenement.

The project takes in about 237 square kilometres of tenure consisting of three exploration licences under application and the one granted licence that will now be drill tested.

The combined landholdings lie in the historical Mt Dimer gold mining hub along the Marda-Diemals Greenstone Belt. Interestingly, Aurum says the project contains more than 51km of strike of prospective greenstone rocks.

Historical mining in the region includes the Mt Dimer operation where more than 8,000 ounces of the precious yellow metal grading 3.44 g/t were produced in the 1990s.

A JORC compliant resource of nearly 50,000 ounces of gold and about 90,000 ounces of silver has since been defined at Mt Dimer by its current owner, ASX-listed Twenty Seven Co.

Another ASX-listed explorer, Aurumin Limited has also returned numerous stellar gold hits at several prospects near Aurum’s ground, including 5m going 19.26 g/t gold, 7m at 7.55 g/t gold and 4m grading 48.69 g/t gold.

Aurum only listed on the bourse in early November with a swag-full of cash and big plans for its gold tenure. The Perth-based explorer looks set for a news-filled 2022 as it smashes out the metres in search of high-grade gold in Western Australia in a region that is famous for giving it up.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au