Barton Gold’s Tunkillia resource estimate surges to 1.5 million ounces

Barton Gold’s (ASX: BGD) (OTCQB: BGDFF) aggressive drilling campaigns have again paid off with the company lifting the Tunkillia joint ore reserves committee (JORC) mineral resource estimate (MRE) to 1.5 million ounces.

The MRE has estimated the project holds around 51.3 million tonnes of ore at 0.91 grams per tonne of gold, boosted by a new 115,216oz of gold resource identified at Area 51 (4.98Mt at 0.72g/t gold).

Managing director Alex Scanlon said Barton has drilled around 8,663m in delivering the new Area 51 deposit mineral resource located to the northwest of the 223 Deposit.

“Barton has now grown Tunkillia’s JORC mineral resources three times during the past 12 months, with around 530,000oz of gold added through the systematic, cost-efficient identification and conversion of new zones,” Mr Scanlon said.

“The updated 1.5Moz of gold resource provides a critical mass on which to now model baseline economic analyses, while pursuing neighbouring high-grade targets like Tunkillia’s Area 191 and Tarcoola.”

“These have significant potential to enhance overall project economics and support stage 1 development leveraging our existing mill.”

The company has seen aggregate growth of around 530,000 ounces of gold at Tunkillia since late 2020.

Plenty of upside

The Area 51 MRE has been informed by a total of 72 drill holes, including 6,058m of reverse circulation (RC) and 2,605.4m diamond drilling (DD) (total 8,663.4m) completed by Barton.

To date, JORC MRE modelling has been restricted to around 150m depth from surface at a 0.5g/t gold cut-off grade in compiling the new MRE at the Area 51 zone.

There is a further broad, continuous halo of surrounding mineralisation modelled on a 0.4g/t gold cut-off grade.

2022 gold zone find

Barton announced the discovery of the new approximately 500m long gold zone at Area 51 in September 2022 with results including 17m at 3.20g/t gold from 77m and 25m at 1.51g/t gold from 81m.

The find was identified during a campaign of 1,926m RC drilling completed at Area 51 in 2022.

Barton followed that up in early 2023 by successfully extending Area 51 to around 700m length in April with key results including 28.55m at 1.32g/t gold from 91.45m.

This was part of additional exploration at Area 51 that included the drilling of an additional 2,118m of RC and 856.9m DD drilling.

Further success came late in 2023 when Barton intersected further broad mineralisation with results including 44.6m at 1.81g/t gold from 64m and 22m at 1.33g/t gold from 158m in completing another 1,700m RC and 1,748.5m DD drilling at Area 51.

MRE growth continues

The new MRE for the Area 51 Deposit has seen Barton’s total attributable mineral resource endowment grow by approximately 8% to a total of 1,575,000oz of gold (52.2Mt at 0.94g/t of gold).

The Area 51 deposit is a satellite deposit approximately 4km north of the Tunkillia Project, located 530km north-west of Adelaide in South Australia’s Gawler Craton.