Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has etched out an intriguing, untested 13-kilometre corridor buried beneath cover along strike of its freshly minted Lighthorse gold discovery at the company’s Pinjin project in Western Australia. No historic drilling exists along 2.7km immediately north and northwest of the discovery.
The company set tongues wagging earlier this month when it pulled up a clutch of intercepts including 17 metres running at 4.81 grams per tonne (g/t) from 48m and 8m at 9.21g/t from 52m. KalGold’s share price went on a tear to hit 8.9 cents, a solid gain of 456 per cent in the week’s trading.
Management believes extensive wide-spaced intercepts at the greenfields Lighthorse gold discovery suggest KalGold may have encountered a large primary gold system hidden under transported cover.
The new find has a 600m strike running parallel to the Laverton Tectonic Zone and remains open to the northwest and southeast.
KalGold is keeping tight-lipped about its proprietary geological knowledge of the newly discovered geology corridor that it says is bound by two north-south striking magnetic ridges, with the eastern ridge hosting the Kirgella Gift and Providence deposits. The company hopes the competitive geological edge will facilitate and enhance the chance of additional discoveries.
A recent analysis of geophysical data stretching 1.5km north of Lighthorse shows a bottleneck and deviation of the host sequence, which may be favourable for gold mineralisation accumulation.
South of Lighthorse, the company notes historic air core and rotary air blast drilling is shallow and irregular over a 1.5km strike of the geological trend. Further south still, at the deeply buried T15 prospect, KalGold believes drilling doesn’t appear to have fully tested the fresh bedrock beneath a regional paleochannel extending to depth of 100m.
The company is now bringing in the cavalry with a reverse circulation (RC) drill program to test under and around the high-grade Lighthorse discovery. Drilling is tipped to kick off in March. It is the first in a series of programs designed to define the full extent of the extensive gold mineralisation system.
Kalgoorlie Gold Mining managing director Matt Painter said: “We are extremely excited by the potential magnitude of the Lighthorse gold mineralised system. Our analysis indicates Lighthorse is hosted within a 13km long, north-south trending geological sequence within KalGold’s tenure. The company is assessing 6km of strike for follow-up air core drilling and, based on these results, will continue to expand the search space.”
The Lighthorse discovery is hosted by a laterally extensive, sheared and deformed volcano-sedimentary sequence within the southern part of the prospective Laverton Tectonic Zone.
The renowned 30-million-ounce zone is one of the State’s most well-endowed gold regions and hosts several producing gold mines, including AngloGold Ashanti’s Sunrise Dam, Gold Fields Ltd’s multi-million-ounce Granny Smith operation and Ramelius Resources’ Rebecca project that contains a 1.1-million-ounce gold resource.
As the gold price continues its meteoric rise, sitting at US$2883 per tonne (A$4562/t) and with a discovery under its belt, KalGold is no doubt hoping to keep its share price on a gallop as a drill rig rolls back into Lighthorse. It has plenty of green pastures to explore.
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By Helen Barling
