Panther Metals has started a second phase of drilling at Burtville East, about 40km south-east of Laverton in WA, to follow up bonanza gold grades from its first six RC drill holes. The first program consisted of only 675m of drilling and returned spectacular results including 15m at 53.9 g/t gold and bonanza 1m intervals with grades including 478, 125.5, 79.9 and 73.3 g/t gold.
The current diamond drilling program aims to provide more detailed information on the structure and rock units in two previous holes with bonanza-gold intercepts and test potential for further stacked lodes. RC drilling will test strike extents and focus on locating lodes at shallow depths down to 100m.
Panther Metals' Managing Director and CEO, Daniel Tuffin said: "The first round of drilling at the Burtville East project consisted of just six RC holes; results were simply stunning. The interception of this new high-grade gold zone challenged the accepted theory of mineralisation trends at Burtville East. The company has since moved fast to plan and implement a follow-up drill program.”
Panther’s Burtville East gold project is within the Laverton greenstone belt and East Yilgarn craton. It is in the north-western part of the company’s large tenement holding forming the Meriola gold project. Panther considers the area under-explored and highly prospective.
The East Yilgarn Craton has a total gold endowment of more than 27 million ounces, including the 2.7-million-ounce Granny Smith deposit that sits about 30km to the west Burtville East and the larger Wallaby and Sunrise Dam deposits residing within 50km of Burtville East.
Historical samples from stockpiles at the Burtville East gold mines have returned grades up to 38.5 g/t gold. Panther’s recent grab samples from Burtville East confirm previous results, with current samples returning 21.7, 0.91, 4.53 and 3.55 g/t gold.
Old drilling results at Burtville East have also returned bonanza-gold grades with 1m intervals up to 110 g/t gold and a 5m interval going 23 g/t gold.
Panther’s recent drilling has led the company to rethink the accepted wisdom regarding mineralisation trends at Burtville East. Previously mineralisation was thought to reflect a north-south structure. The company now believes the mineralisation is more complex and probably resulting from the filling of a series of north-east-south-west striking stacked dilation zones.
Panther’s Burtville East project is east of Focus Minerals’ Burtville-Karriadale project where an exploration target of 2.9 to 5.3 million ounces of gold has been declared over an area of old mines showing stacked or en-echelon veins striking north-easterly and cross-cutting northerly striking high-grade structures. At first glance the mineralisation and geology between the two projects look strikingly similar, indicating Panther could well have a big target on its hands. Now back to the drilling….
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By Matt Birney
