Argent Minerals confirms gold at Pine Ridge, finds new targets

Argent Minerals (ASX: ARD) ended 2021 with pieces falling into place on its road to reviving the old Pine Ridge gold mine in New South Wales.

The company’s latest quarterly report shows that the three months to 31 December saw Ardent complete reverse circulation (RC) drilling at the mine site, which is located 6km south of the company’s flagship Kempfield polymetallic project, which itself is 30km from town of Blayney.

It was an important three months for Argent.

As the company reports “outstanding high-grade” gold results were received during the quarter with most drill holes yielding thick intersections of gold mineralisation that remains open in all directions and at depth.

These included 6m at 10.52 grams per tonne gold from 60m down hole, including 2m at 27.94g/t.

Another hole intersected three zones of mineralisation, the best of which returned 6m at 3.67g/t (and included a 1m interval at 12.5g/t).

Re-interpretation of Pine Ridge data has revealed nine new walk-up copper-gold targets

Contracts let toward increasing mineral resource

Of the last of the drill holes completed, RC samples have gone to Nagrom Laboratories in Perth, with results pending.

Meanwhile, Argent has engaged Odessa Geological to re-interpret the geological modelling over Pine Ridge and begin a mineral resource estimation.

In addition, with the main Kempfield project, Core Geophysics has been contracted to reprocess all available geophysical data sets from the past 15 years for the purpose of delineating the geophysical signatures of the base-metal, gold and silver mineralisation over the project.

Pine Ridge includes a series of historic alluvial, eluvial and underground hard rock gold mines which operated in the period between the 1820s and 1940s and, according to NSW government records, produced gold at grades greater than 250g/t.

Twenty-eight years since previous exploration

Argent, which had acquired Pine Ridge several years ago, drilled four diamond holes in 2019, which returned 19m at 3.2g/t from 98.4m, including 1m at 40.7g/t.

The only work recorded since the 1940s was RC drilling in 1994 by the former listed explorer, Goldrim Mining Australia.

Goldrim’s results included 21m at 5.6g/t, 10m at 4.1g/t and 18m at 2.4g/t.

No diamond drilling had been done there until Argent’s work in 2019.

Previously unknown gold-copper targets now revealed

The company is aiming to upgrade the 1995 historical resource compiled by Goldrim to JORC standard, as well as to test for extensions.

Chief executive officer George Karageorge says in the quarterly report that the data review from Core Geophysics represents a major step forward.

“The high-resolution interpretation has delineated potential gold-copper porphyry targets previously unknown, as these represent potentially large tonnage exploration targets,” he added.

“We have now placed the company is a position to … commence ground exploration over multiple geophysical, lithological, mineralised and structured targets and trends previously unknown.”