Everest Metals Corporation has placed its foot firmly on what it says is strategically important new ground, with the acquisition of two new exploration licenses and an application for a third at its Revere gold and base metals project, 90km north-east of Meekatharra in Western Australia’s Mid West region.
All three of the new licences are contiguous and once the pending application is granted and combined with Everest’s existing tenure, it will knit together the company’s entire package into a single block anchored around a 12.31-square-kilometre mining lease.
The block not only more than doubles the company’s existing holding in the area from 82 to 172 square kilometres, but also links all of the Revere project tenure to enclose 15km of strike along an important structural corridor. The corridor is defined by a distinct north-easterly elevated magnetic trend that contains the mineralised Revere reef structure.
Everest Metals Corporation executive chairman and chief executive officer Mark Caruso said: “EMC’s move to expand its tenure across its Revere gold & base metal project reflects the Company’s confidence of building on its high-grade gold occurrences from surface as well as base metal orebodies at depth. The new tenements connect the structural corridor over the significant portion of the Revere Reef magnetic anomalies”.
Management says almost no exploration work has been undertaken on any of its new ground, leaving it free to write its own exploration and discovery story on about 10km of new area along the structural trend running north-east from its existing coverage.
The exploration will be made easier by access via the Great Northern Highway, which passes along part of the northern boundary of the extended project area, in addition to at least nine other access tracks leading into the area from all sides. The tracks include three leading no more than 7km south directly into the ground from the highway and in some cases, passing north-south right through the project area.
The Revere project is in a proven gold producing region of WA along an inferred extension of the Andy Well greenstone shear system, with known gold occurrences and strong base metal and gold potential at depth. It sits along strike of the famed DeGrussa and Monty copper-gold mines that lie just 55km north-east along strike from Revere on the same structural trend.
Everest entered a farm-in and joint venture (JV) arrangement in January last year to earn up to a 100 per cent interest in the Revere project from privately-owned Entelechy Resources. The company’s interest in the venture stands at 51 per cent.
At the time of the farm-in agreement, the company said it viewed the Revere project as “… a transformational opportunity in a proven prolific gold producing region of WA, with significant gold and copper potential – both at surface and at depth – as is clearly evidenced from previous exploration work undertaken across the project, from which there is an abundance of high-quality technical data”.
Everest will now hand 500,000 of its shares each to private WA companies Warringa Blue and Lil Boyteeth as part of the deal to acquire its new tenements.
Substantial work, including mapping, remote sensing data, geophysics, soil sampling, rotary air-blast (RAB), air-core (AC) and reverse-circulation (RC) drilling has been undertaken by different companies in the Revere area, with the best historical drill result being 7.8g/t gold.
The Revere reef structure is described as a complex mineralised shear zone, composed of geologically-distinct, structurally-variable high-grade veins running at between about 5 to 50g/t gold. Additionally, anomalous high nickel and copper values at Revere indicate the potential for a DeGrussa-type copper-gold deposit below the zone of weathering oxidation.
Both copper and gold lodes in the region are generally narrow and long but carry high grades. The nearby Thaduna lode is about 600m long, but only about 3m wide on average.
The mineralisation comprises high-grade, shear-hosted shoots and lower-grade disseminated mineralisation up to 20m wide. The DeGrussa deposit was discovered though follow-up drilling across a zone of oxide gold mineralisation similar to that observed at Revere.
Everest is plainly walking in what mineral explorers term “elephant country” and has bolstered its chances of a significant discovery with its latest acquisitions.
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By Doug Bright
