Far East nails big precious metals hit in Sumatra
By Doug Bright
In this edition of Bulls N’ Bears Big Hits, we examine some of the notable drill intersections revealed on the ASX this week, including Far East Gold’s stellar 20m intercept going 7.57g/t gold and 8.5g/t silver from 67.5m.We also take a close look at some other interesting drill hits from around the globe last week as reported by Vital Metals in Canada and AIC Mines in Queensland, Australia.
So, let’s dive in.
Victory vein - Aloe Rek prospect - Woyla gold project – Sumatra
Hit: 20m at 7.57g/t gold and 8.5g/t silver (7.67 g/t AuEq) from 67.5m to 87.5m.
Far East Gold’s 20m hit was remarkable in that it also includes an 11m section grading as high as 13.45g/t gold and 13.68g/t silver from 70.5m. It also includes another 3.3m intercept going just over an ounce to the tonne gold and 26.8 g/t silver from 75.8m in the Victory vein at Aloe Rek. The company says the latest hole amounts to one of the project’s best cumulative gold-metre intercepts to date.
A second hole drilled about 60m further north into the same vein gave up a handsome 0.7m at 30.05g/t gold and 21.9g/t silver from 70.2m within a broader 3.4m hit going 6.68 g/t gold and 7.81 g/t silver from 68.5m.
The results come from a maiden suite of 12 initial scout diamond holes drilled for a total of 1884m at Aloe Rek within the company’s Woyla gold project, the first drilling in the prospect’s history, despite it being Barrick’s priority prospect in the area during its historical ownership.
Far East’s high-grade drilling results, combined with good intercept lengths, confirm what Barrick suspected when it targeted Aloe Rek in the 1990’s. At the time, Barrick said Aloe Rek could be one of the most prospective undrilled copper-gold projects in South-East Asia considering its potential to host high grade epithermal and porphyry deposits.
Previous Far East soil sampling around the Victory vein system outlined a gold-arsenic anomaly up to 70m wide along a strike distance of 900m, with anomalous arsenic values over an area up to 200m wide.
Previously-reported trench channel-sample assays include 1m at 13.4g/t gold and another sample showing 7m at 4.95g/t gold with 23.5g/t silver. The company’s mapping and rock sampling of vein material at Aloe Rek from artisanal mine workings also returned gold assays of up to 76g/t gold and 101g/t silver from grab samples of sulphide-bearing quartz.
Far East’s drilling has revealed the presence of a multiple vein system with four veins outcropping at surface and possibly converging with increasing depth to a current vertical limit of drilling of about 300m.
In a long section through the drilled zone the Victory reef appears to run in surface outcrop for about 550m, with high grade mineralisation - demonstrated by drilling spaced at about 50m intervals - extending to about 100m vertical depth and for a surface strike distance between 150 and 175m.
The company believes the lensoidal area of high grade mineralisation defined to date at Victory could be the result of hydrothermal fluid boiling in a dilated part of the host vein, or it could result from the influence of a cross-structure to the main vein.
As with other vein zones at Woyla which Far East has mapped and drilled, the Victory zone veins appear to have been emplaced into active fault systems which were periodically reactivated historically to yield a multi-stage complex of quartz veins and quartz breccias, which can contain significant arsenopyrite/pyrite sulphides in their matrices.
Far East Gold is an Australian copper-gold exploration company with six advanced projects in Australia and Indonesia. Its Woyla Project covers 242.60 sq km of ground in Sumatra’s province of Aceh, Indonesia.
The company holds a 51 per cent interest in the project which will increase to 80 per cent if it completes a feasibility study and definition of a maiden JORC resource estimate for the project.
It is apparent that additional potential exists for high grade gold in the Victory vein system south of the area drilled, as evidenced by a recent grab sample collected south along strike of the Victory vein which assayed 15.6g/t gold and 25.8 g/t silver.
Vital Metals
Tardiff deposit - Nechalacho Rare Earth Project – Northwest Territories - Canada.
Hit: 47.07m at 2.1 per cent total rare earths oxides (TREO) from 9.12m
Vital Metals 47m headline intersection includes 22.24m at an even better 2.4 per cent TREO and an 8.8m section going as high as 3 per cent TREO.
While the headline primary hit is the best intercept in metre-per cent terms, another notable result deserving of mention came from a second 53.5m hole grading 1.5 per cent TREO from 6.7m and perhaps most importantly, that intersection includes 15.8m at 2.6 per cent TREO which in turn includes 1.8m at a remarkable 8 per cent TREO.
The top ten holes reported from the final 24 holes range in primary intercept lengths between 14m and 55m, reporting average grades between 1.6 and 2.3 per cent TREO from depths ranging between a shallow 4.55m and a maximum depth of 75m.
Vital’s current shallow altered-syenite mineral resource estimate at Tardiff stands at an impressive 213 million tonnes at a grade of 1.17 per cent TREO.
The object of the 2023 resource definition program, which comprised a total of 74 holes for 6664m of drilling, was to increase confidence in the resource definition and grade at Tardiff Zones 1 and 3 by closing in the drill spacing before embarking on further modelling for resource upgrade and conversion.
To meet this objective, the company’s closed its drillhole spacing down to a nominal 50m-by-50m grid to infill areas which had previously been drilled on more open 100m or 200m spacings.
Vital believes Tardiff is one of the biggest single rare earths deposits in the western world, currently estimated to contain 623,000 tonnes of the more lucrative rare earths elements neodymium and praseodymium (NdPr).
The company says Tardiff is one of the highest grade rare earth deposits in the world and the only rare earth project capable of beneficiation solely by ore sorting.
The two elements are part of the “light-magnet” series of rare earths and are prioritised and valued for the manufacture of electricity generating systems and high-powered electric motors such as those employed in electric vehicle (EVs).
Mineralisation at the project remains open to the west, northwest and on the southern margins of the deposit and the company says results to date confirm potential for a shallow, higher-grade resource expansion and will aid in the interpretation of the geological model and mineralisation controls.
Vital says it will use all of the results from the program to produce an updated mineral resource for Tardiff and it is planning a scoping study which will look at future production scenarios for the deposit, expected to be finished by the end of the year.
AIC Mines
Sandy Creek prospect – near Eloise copper mine 60km south-east of Cloncurry, Queensland
Hit: 9.0m at 3.34 per cent copper and 1.18g/t gold from 246m
AIC Mines put down three diamond drillholes for 972m at its Sandy Creek prospect, 20km west of the company’s Eloise copper mine, which were designed as step-out holes to probe possible strike and down-dip extensions of existing mineralisation. All three holes intersected high-grade broad zones of copper mineralisation.
The first two holes in the south-eastern extremity of the Sandy Creek deposit successfully extended mineralisation further to the south by about 100m, with indications that the copper grade could improve further down-plunge.
The headline hole tested the down-plunge extension of mineralisation, intersecting the main lens and returning the best copper grade-width result from the prospect to date and pointing to the potential of the deposit to yield high-grades over good widths.
The second hole, off the same collar point as the headline hole which intercepted mineralisation about 60m further to the south-east, bored through 4.0m at 2.04 per cent copper, 0.68g/t gold, 9.12 per cent zinc and 1.04 per cent lead from 272m.
The third hole ran through the mineralisation about 100m north of the previous pair of holes, intersecting 152.0m at a modest 0.54 per cent copper from 187m however that run included four good intercepts ranging between 4m and 13m carrying grades ranging from 1.08 and 1.4 per cent copper, to a maximum depth of 313m.
It was designed to intersect the main lens at 200m below the surface in the vicinity of an interpreted steep southwest plunging regional fold axis.
It intersected the main lens at the target depth, drilling through two upper zones of mineralisation starting at 192m.
It then continued through mineralisation to the end of hole, highlighting the continuous nature of the main lens at the south end of the system down-dip and it also provided context as to the grade and thickness of the lower grade alteration halo - and also showed just how much metal the system contains.
Drilling also pointed to the control of the main shear zone geometry on the mineralisation and the effect of later folding on the dip and strike of the main lens.
Mineralisation remains open in three directions, along strike between the surface and the second hole and also down-dip and down-plunge to the southeast.
The company’s Eloise Mine is a high-grade operating underground mine 60km southeast of Cloncurry in North Queensland. It began production in 1996 and has since produced about 376,000t of copper and 185,000oz of gold.
AIC acquired a 100 per cent interest in the mine in November 2021 and current operations consist of an underground mine accessed via decline.
With Sandy Creek lying only 20km west of Eloise within trucking distance of the plant, further success at Sandy Creek, particularly in defining higher-grade copper zones, could see the prospect fast-tracked for potential development.
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