Welcome to our weekly feature, TNM Drill Down, focusing on the top gold assays of the past week. Assays are ranked by gold grade x width, as identified by our sister company Mining Intelligence.
Australia was responsible for producing this week’s top-two drill assays. Westgold Resources (ASX: WGX) announced on Oct. 26 that it had intersected bonanza grades at its Paddy’s Flat target on the Meekatharra Gold Operations (MGO) in Western Australia. Hole 22CNDD173 returned 15.8 metres grading 47.22 grams gold per tonne from 20 metres depth, for a width x grade of 745. Parallel intercepts from the same hole also recorded positive assays, including 5.3 metres at 8.24 grams per tonne and 5.2 metres at 3.28 grams gold per tonne. The company says the results provide substantial confidence in the system when combined with previous sampling and past production figures. Westgold plans to establish a long-life underground mining hub at Paddy’s Flat, where it currently produces around 60,000 tonnes per month at a gold grade of 3.1 grams per tonne. The site joins the company’s Bluebird mine as the two operations feeding Westgold’s 1.8 million tonnes per annum Bluebird processing hub.
The second-best drill assay of the week comes from Gascoyne Resources (ASX: GCY) and its Dalgaranga project, also in Western Australia. Hole DGDH032 returned 12.6 metres grading 34.5 grams gold per tonne from 397.43 metres depth for a width x grade value of 434. It confirmed a high-grade discovery at the Never Never zone, immediately north of the main operating pit. Never Never is a high-grade, west-striking, and steeply-plunging gold deposit discovered while following up wide, high-grade drill intercepts from the earlier Gilbey’s North extension discovery, immediately north of the Gilbey’s open pit at Dalgaranga. The company said the drill hole results were accompanied by visible gold mineralization and came from down-plunge and outside of the recently released 79,600-oz. mineral resource estimate. Additional diamond drilling to test the geometry and structure of the Never Never lode also returned 8 metres at 5.17 grams per tonne from 62 metres and 6 metres at 7.78 grams per tonne from 116 metres downhole. This drill hole was completed in an interpreted intersection of the Never Never and Gilbey’s North deposits, returning mineralization outside the current MRE.
The third-best assay of the week came from Ascot Resources (TSX: AOT), which reported a 10.7-metre intercept grading 31.92 grams gold per tonne from 90 metres depth for a width x grade value of 341, at its Premier project, in British Columbia. These results are from surface drilling for in-fill and exploration purposes at the Big Missouri deposit, about 6 km north of the past-producing Premier mill. In addition to the high grades, Ascot says it is encouraging that most of the intercepts were encountered within or close to existing block model wireframes and in potential extensions of those wireframes, further validating the resource model.
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