St George expands nickel-copper footprint
St George Mining remains hot on the trail of a potentially company making discovery at its Mt Alexander Project near Agnew, where the explorer’s drill program encountered additional nickel and copper sulphides, confirming an expanded mineralised ultramafic footprint to the north, east and west.
St Georges Mining Executive Chairman, John Prineas, said three recent drill holes intercepted more nickel-copper sulphides, revealing a vector to the north of a recent spectacular discovery drill hole that set the market alight.
Recent drilling has confirmed the deposit is still open to the North, West and East.
Assays are still pending for the three recent drill holes, however in field, preliminary XRF readings show mineralisation going between 2% and 5% Nickel and 1% and 3% copper.
Whilst the 3-4m higher grade intersections from the recent drilling campaign did not replicate the 17m highly mineralised intersection in the company’s discovery hole, St Geprge management say they may have found the edge high grade mineral system.
The company will now focus on drilling to the north and west of the discovery hole where all indications are that the mineralisation appears to thicken.
This is an area where the large SAMSON and SQUID EM anomalies remain untested by drilling and the area is covered by a strong magnetic anomaly.
St George is encouraged that the latest drilling campaign continued to intersect mineralised ultramafic at similar depths to the discovery hole, which last month intersected a 17m nickel-copper sulphide interval from just 37.5m downhole. This included a 10.1m intersection of massive sulphides with XRF readings averaging an impressive 5.5 per cent nickel and 2.1 per cent copper.
“The results in are outstanding with thick widths of high grade mineralisation at shallow depths. This is very favourable for the economics of a potential mining operation at Mt Alexander,” Mr Prineas said of the discovery hole.
“We have already established recurrent high-grade mineralisation over a 3.5km strike length in the Cathedrals Belt. Now, with the exceptional intersections, the confidence in the resource potential at Mt Alexander continues to build,” he added.
Granite xenoliths and breccia textures were observed in the drill core of all three more recent drill holes suggesting mechanical remobilisation of sulphides, which according to management is common in nickel sulphide deposits.
.Mt Alexander is strategically located close to existing mining operations in the world class Agnew-Wiluna nickel - gold belt.
Illustrious blue-chip mining operators; notably BHP Billiton, Cosmos and Talisman, have nickel mining operations located 60-120km north and north-west of St George’s prospects. Mt Alexander is also close to existing infrastructure including roads, power supplies and processing plants.
With assay results pending, Mr Prineas said St George was targeting a potential scoping study in the first half of 2018. In the interim, the company was looking at expanding its drilling program.
With its share price bottoming out at 7.9c in August this year, St George had investors sitting bolt up right after announcing its discovery hole with the stock rocketing to an all time high of 48c just a few days ago.
St George shares closed down at 26c yesterday with impatient profit takers not prepared to wait for the next few holes in the program.
Mount Alexander was acquired by St George from BHP Billiton in 2015. Mr Prineas said the Stricklands Prospect had exceeded expectations and loomed as a potentially seminal moment in the company’s history.
He said “ “Step-out drilling at Stricklands is ongoing 24/7 to test for continuation of the mineralisation in the prospective area to the north and north-west of MAD71.”