Tennant Minerals (ASX:TMS) has discovered ‘intense’ gold, copper, and bismuth mineralisation at its Barkly Project, 32km east of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory.
The latest diamond drilling produced a “thick intersection” of intense iron-oxide and copper-gold-bismuth mineralisation at the Bluebird copper-gold-bismuth-silver discovery.
The drill hole intersected a 19.7m downhole of intense hematite-quartz/jasper-sulphide breccia mineralisation with native copper, bismuth sulphides, and specks of visible gold.
This includes 4.55m from 178m of ironstone-breccia with between 2 and 10% blebs of copper and bismuth. There were sulphides measuring up to 5mm, and specks/blebs of visible gold between 0.1mm and 1.5mm. There were also 15.15m from 182.55m of jasper-hematite breccia with between 1 and 5% of native copper and copper sulphides on fractures and throughout the breccia.
“The new drill core from this drilling will also provide samples for test work to enhance and optimise gold and bismuth recovery, providing results for study work as part of the Tennant Creek Copper Alliance,” Tennant Minerals says.
“Rapid growth of gold and bismuth pricing offers potential to significantly impact the economics of the project… [and] the latest intersections reinforce our confidence in extending copper-gold-bismuth resources on the Barkly Project, as we pursue our goal of developing the Bluebird discovery which lies in the rejuvenated Tennant Creek Mineral Field, which has already produced 5.5 million ounces of gold and 700 kilotonnes of copper.”
The discovery’s indicated mineral resource estimate has also increased to 1.07 million tonnes of more than 0.3% of copper equivalent. The inferred mineral resource estimate is 510,000 tonnes of more than 0.3% of copper equivalent.
These estimates exclude known mineralisation found 180m beneath the surface, which has insufficiently been drilled to a density over a large enough area to constitute a defined underground mineral resource at the time of writing.
Tennant Minerals is a base and precious metals exploration and development company with assets in the Northern Territory.
Write to Richard Szabo at Mining.com.au
Images: Tenant Minerals
