WA gold strikes drive exploration for DiscovEx
ASX-listed gold explorer DiscovEx Resources has closed the book on a busy December quarter headlined by an intersection of bedrock and paleochannel-sourced gold at its Spartan prospect, part of its larger Edjudina project about 250km north-east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
The project sits in the southern slice of the Laverton district and is close to several major gold deposits including AngloGold Ashanti's 10 million ounce plus Sunrise Dam mine, Northern Star Resources’ more than 2Moz Carosue Dam gold mine and Matsa Resources’ 0.2 Moz Red October gold mine.
Better intersections from the 37-hole air-core program include 4m grading 2.1 grams per tonne gold from 32m within a larger 12m strike running 0.83 g/t from a depth of 28m within a paleochannel at DiscovEx’s Spartan prospect. Another 4m hit pulled in 0.95 g/t gold from 32m and sat inside a larger 16m envelope running 0.46 g/t from 28m.
Holes plunged within a weathered bedrock component at Spartan delivered an 8m strike going 0.22 g/t gold 80m and 4m going 0.27 g/t from 72m. Notably, the company may be set to add copper to the prospect’s commodity profile after an anomalous copper hit going 0.13 per cent was recorded in an additional hole plunged within the bedrock.
The company says assay results from additional holes plunged at Spartan are still pending and are expected to be announced later this year.
The Perth-based explored also completed a surface geochemical sampling program at its nearby Falcon prospect over the quarter to fill in the gaps of a previously completed survey. The program led to the confirmation of an over 3km gold anomaly with a clutch of elevated results as high as 98 parts per billion. Firming up the exploration drive was the finding of a new gold anomaly known as Hercules which is open to the north. DiscovEx plans to kick off a soil sampling campaign at the site in due course.
Edjudina takes in a raft of granted exploration tenements and is considered prospective for gold and nickel-copper mineralisation. Its core extends across a 29km strike range that houses a sequence of highly prospective greenstone rocks.
The project has been left largely untouched by historical exploration campaigns with previous activity in the zone restricted to light drilling programs, soil sampling and geophysics campaigns between the 1980s and 1990s.
Back then the price of gold hovered around US$300 an ounce meaning many explorers opted to chase discoveries that could be more economically developed. With the price of gold currently trending around US$1920 per ounce, its strongest level in about nine months, DiscovEx has every reason to believe the project is ripe for a closer inspection.
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