Barton Gold stays busy with new drilling campaign at Tarcoola’s Perseverance open pit
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A highly-active Barton Gold (ASX: BGD) (OTCQB: BGDFF) has initiated a key reverse circulation (RC) drilling campaign aimed at adding further ounces to its Tarcoola gold project as it looks to return the historic South Australian mine to production.
The new holes to be drilled inside Tarcoola’s Perseverance open pit mine are targeting shallow, cheap-to-mine gold in the lead-up to a major series of activities in 2024 that will add to the project’s current mineral resource estimate.
Fresh off wrapping up a large and successful drilling program at its Tunkillia gold project, Barton has designed a Tarcoola campaign of approximately 1,500m to test immediate pit floor mineralisation at Perseverance.
Easily accessible
“We are focused on adding shallow, easily accessible mineralisation to our existing open pit as the first step to confirming an initial base of resources supporting an accelerated ‘Stage 1’ return to production and cash flow,” managing director Alex Scanlon said.
“Even minor extensions can offer high-value ounces considering our fully permitted mining lease, fully licensed mill and the significantly reduced capital and operating requirements for an existing shallow open pit mine.”
“We look forward to an exciting 2024 as we test several new targets identified in our recently published structural map of the Tarcoola Goldfield and determine the roadmap for Barton’s transition from ‘explorer’ to ‘producer’.”
The Tarcoola project is the site of the brownfields open pit Perseverance mine which operated during 2017 and 2018.
Barton believes there are opportunities to uncover further commercial gold resources within the pit itself and at a number of targets in the vicinity.
In 2020 and 2021, drilling identified multiple depth extensions of mineralisation below the Perseverance open pit mine floor and confirmed a new shallow high-grade gold zone, known as Perseverance West, in new structures identified behind the southern wall of the open pit.
Targeting pit floor mineralisation
The new RC program follows Barton’s diamond drilling (DD) undertaken at Tarcoola during September 2023, where 600 meters of drilling was completed at the south end of the pit to obtain structural information for the Deliverance target and Perseverance West.
The new campaign will feature approximately 20 RC drill holes totaling approximately 1,500 meters.
The prime target is immediate extensions of mineralisation in the open pit floor, with analysis of the RC and DD drilling results to help refine targets for further follow-up drilling.
Results from the various programs will also assist in converting extensions of the pit to joint ore reserves committeee mineral resources during the first half of 2024.
Upside exploration planning
Since acquiring the Tarcoola project, Barton Gold has undertaken a significant amount of modern exploration work in the lead-up to making a decision to return the mine to production.
With a wealth of new information gleaned from the recent seismic program now in its knowledge bank, Barton’s other early 2024 Tarcoola programs will include drilling on high-priority targets identified by the survey.
That survey confirmed the significant upside of the project, with recently published results revealing the subsurface architecture of the high-grade Tarcoola gold field for the first time in its 130-year history.
The survey successfully mapped several new and previously untested structures across the Tarcoola gold field, with preliminary analysis indicating that gold mineralisation is closely associated with deeper-tapping sub-vertical structures similar to the Perseverance fault.
The seismic results will be further assessed by drilling in 2024.