Western Australian-based explorer E79 Gold Mines (ASX: E79) is gearing up for a busy few months of drilling across its portfolio of projects in Western Australia.
E79 Gold’s Projects comprise 944km-square of ‘highly prospective’ ground with flagship projects in the LTZ and the Murchison Goldfields, both of which are endowed with more than 30 million ounces of gold. The Projects are a mix of early stage greenfields exploration and walk-up drill targets.
E79 Gold is an active explorer with a motto of spending money in the ground.
One focus is the Laverton South Project, with an area of 355km-square, covers a southern portion of the Laverton Tectonic Zone (LTZ) some 130km east-northeast of Kalgoorlie, within the major gold producing Archean Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia.
Another is Lake Yindana in the southern portion of the +30Moz LTZ, about 130km east northeast of Kalgoorlie. The project consists of a large untested greenstone belt, defined by corroborating magnetics and gravity data, as well as historic drilling, which runs for over 25km through the tenement.
The Jungar Flats Project, in the North Murchison region, is located 70km west of Meekatharra and 45km north-northeast of the 2.8Moz Big Bell gold deposit. The project contains some 90km of strike of the ‘highly prospective’ Big Bell Shear, and straddles a narrow north-south trending greenstone belt.
Over 30km of this greenstone belt, mapped-out by recent gravity survey’s by E79, was tested in a large-scale soil auger program completed in late 2022 with assay results now imminent. The auger results will be used to plan regional aircore programs.
The area is prospective for gold, base metals, iron ore, and PGEs.
E79 Gold is undertaking a large drill program utilising both reverse circulation (RC) and aircore drill rigs. The RC rig will test deeper and more focused zones at Target 3, where earlier AC drilling results outlined a 2,600m long and 200m deep anomalous gold system.
The results from first-pass RC drilling at Target 3 show strong similarities with the large Granny Smith deposits (Goanna, Granny Smith, and Windich) where gold deposits sit within a 3km long zone of low-grade gold anomalism within which the higher grade gold deposits are related to changes in geometry of the host structures on the eastern side of a kilometre scale granitic intrusion.
E79 Gold says gold mineralisation in the Granny Smith deposits is expressed as thick zones of low-grade material within the granite, with thick high-grade zones along the granite/greenstone contact where the angle of the contact becomes flatter.
Defining similar changes in structural geometry at Target 3 to those ‘high-grade’ contact positions at Granny Smith is the key focus of the upcoming RC program. Targets are located both along strike to the north and south and down-dip of previous gold mineralised intercepts.
The AC drilling will test for extensions to the Target 3 gold system to the south and to test the granite greenstone contact to the north of the previous RC drilling. The AC rig will also test areas of Target 4.
“We have an exciting few months ahead with RC and AC rigs due back on site at Laverton South in the coming weeks, giving us another opportunity to look at the Target 3 gold system at depth and in more detail”
Addressing the works program, E79 Gold CEO Ned Summerhayes says: “We have an exciting few months ahead with RC and AC rigs due back on site at Laverton South in the coming weeks, giving us another opportunity to look at the Target 3 gold system at depth and in more detail.
At this early stage, we note strong similarities between the Target 3 gold system and the Granny Smith gold deposits – both lie within a 3km long gold anomaly, on the eastern side of a granitic intrusion, and contain pods of high-grade gold mineralisation within a much larger low-grade gold zone along the contact.
E79 Gold’s recent RC drilling shows similarities in the lower grade zones between the main mining centres at Granny Smith and the limited work completed to date at Target 3, with only one phase of RC drilling completed to date. Our upcoming RC drilling will aim to test the interpreted high-grade zones based on the Granny Smith model.
Meanwhile, at the Lake Yindana tenements, our pathway to getting a drill rig on site has become clearer, with the 2 native title claims redrawing their boundaries so the company’s tenements are now located within just one native title claim.
We also note with interest Ramelius Resources’ proposed take-over offer for Breaker Resources. This proposal would consolidate the ownership of the 2 large undeveloped gold deposits in the area and puts E79 Gold in a central position in the event of any future discovery on our tenements.”
Write to Adam Orlando at Mining.com.au
Images: E79 Gold Mines Ltd
