Brightstar Resources has picked up some prime geological real estate contiguous to its current gold exploration land holdings near Laverton, boosting the company’s holdings in the region to a solid 300 square kilometres. The acquisition comes off the back of a recent $2.3 million oversubscribed placement that has given it enough funding to drill test its significant landholdings in the region.
The newly acquired “Comet Well” lease package consists of 120 square kilometres with 17 gold exploration prospects that haven’t seen any major exploration effort since 2001. The tenements have a series of shallow, historical drill hits that were inexplicitly never run to ground.
Comet Well consists of 2 exploration leases and will be acquired from privateer Milford Resources Pty Ltd for $50,000 cash, 15m Brightstar shares, 20m unlisted options exercisable at $0.05 and a 1 per cent net smelter royalty.
The Comet Well land package is located adjacent and contiguous to Brightstar’s existing exploration license areas at the Alpha and Beta prospects that house a combined JORC resource already of 207,000 ounces of gold grading 2 grams per tonne. Notably, the project comes gift wrapped with an old mill that could potentially be brought back online.
Of the 17 prospects identified in the Comet Well project area, 5 are considered high priority by the company.
The Ares prospect, within Comet Well, contains a 450-metre-long mineralised zone that coincides with the intersection of a north-north-west trending shear. Historical drilling there has identified mineralisation hosted in the quartz veins associated with the sheared granite and mafic contact.
Lag sampling in the Comet Well project area originally identified the Sphinx prospect within the Probart Well shear zone and includes three anomalies for follow up exploration. Historical drilling at Sphinx hit gold anomalism over the entire width of the shear zone and continued over a strike length of approximately 1km.
Other high priority targets include the Green and Rymer prospects that are a strike extension to Sphinx.
The company’s main priority is expanding current its resources in addition to converting as much to reserves as possible. Once a solid resource and reserve base has been locked away, Brightstar will then look to get the mill recommissioned.
A resource definition drill campaign commenced on the 10th of September at Brightstar’s Cork Tree Well prospect located approximately 50km northwest of Comet Well. The drill program is currently approximately three quarters complete and the program is proceeding ahead of schedule both in terms of drill rate and also cost projections.
A 3.86m tonne JORC compliant resource grading 1.9 g/t gold for 237,000 ounces of gold already exists at Cork Tree Well and the current drilling is aimed at infilling and extending the mineralisation in addition to testing the accuracy of the previous geological model. The geological sequence hosting the gold mineralisation is underlain by a basal mafic unit and overlain by high magnesium basalt.
Minanalytical Ltd in Perth is analysing the drill chips with initial assay results expected imminently.
Brightstar Resources Managing Director, Bill Hobba said: “Logistically the Comet Well lease package aligns closely with the Alpha and Beta packages that Brightstar already owns, this will allow unfettered access between the two packages as well as providing opportunities for synergies between projects in adjacent lease holdings. With over 17 potential targets and significant opportunity available in an area that is already part of Brightstar’s expertise these leases are an excellent fit for our existing tenure.”
The company’s extensive tenement package is located in the highly prospective north Laverton greenstone belt in the Eastern Goldfields within the east Yilgarn craton. The east Yilgarn craton hosts two world class deposits including the behemoth Sunrise Dam and Wallaby gold mines in addition to Granny Smith and Mount Morgan.
With pockets full of cash from a recent raise, nearly half a million ounces of gold in the tin already and an arsenal of prospective tenements amassed within short trucking distance of its 100 per cent owned mill, Brightstar has a lot of boxes already ticked.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
