Alice Queen (ASX:AQX) is getting ready to take on some geological mapping and surface geochemical sampling work across its Sabeto Project in Fiji as a copper-gold alkaline breccia target emerges in the area.
The microcap explorer says recent field observations and a review of the Sabeto database have highlighted the presence of a diatreme breccia outcropping over an area of roughly 100m at Sabeto. This breccia remains open to the north and south.
In this zone, the company has reported high-grade gold veining — up to 24.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold — nearby to the diatreme breccia.
Alice Queen says it will complete its planned mapping and sampling work to the north and south of the outcrop of the diatreme to define its surface extent, and this work will begin as soon as weather and site conditions allow.
The company adds that this program could result in vectors for drilling at this ‘highly prospective’ target.
The Sabeto project lies on the Sabeto range on Fiji’s Viti Levu island — the same range that hosts Lion One Metals’ (ASX:LLO) operating Tuvato gold mine, just 6km to the east. Alice Queen says the mineralisation at its project is hosted in the same alkaline rock formation as the mineralisation at Tuvato.
Listed explorer Geopacific Resources (ASX:GPR) completed historical drilling in the area peripheral to Alice Queen’s diatreme target and intersected gold and copper mineralisation at depth.
Essentially, Alice Queen says the previous work in the area and its new observations of mineralised carapace breccias and mineralised highly evolved felsic intrusive in drill core are vectors to potential deeper gold and potentially copper mineralisation.
“The conceptual target envisaged at Sabeto is an alkaline ‘subvolcanic breccia hosted gold/copper ore body’ of some 80-100 million tonnes in a pipe-like geometry (i.e. 250-350m in diameter), that would be extracted by underground block cave mining,” the company says.
Meanwhile, Alice Queen says its tenement over the Viani Project in Vanua Levu is in its final stage of renewal with Fiji’s Mineral Resources Department.
Once the tenement is renewed, the company plans to take on an ‘aggressive’ surface geochemical sampling and drilling program in the area.
Images: Alice Queen
