Mining

De Grey Mining reports encouraging gold assays from sampling program at Clarke prospect

Go to Lorna Nicholas author's page
By Lorna Nicholas - 
De Grey Mining ASX DEG gold assays sampling program Clarke prospect
Copied

Pilbara gold explorer De Grey Mining (ASX: DEG) reported it has found high grade gold in rock chip samples within the Clarke prospect, where it is earning a 75% stake from Farno McMahon.

The first pass rock chip and soil exploration program was carried out across about 1.5km of strike within Clarke and totalled 101 soil and 57 rock chip samples.

The limited program uncovered soil samples grading up to 1.79 grams per tonne gold. Eight rock chip samples returned gold grading more than 1g/t ranging between 1.08g/t up to 28.3g/t gold.

“The scale of these anomalies, together with the encouraging early drill results at the equally large Fir, Holly, and Aspen prospects, plus other untested anomalies within E47/2502 is why we are investing in this area,” De Grey operations manager Andy Beckwith said.

Previous first pass shallow aircore and rotary airblast drilling at Fir returned a 1m interval grading 328.4g/t, while similar exploration at Holly and Aspen revealed 13m at 15.15g/t gold and 3m grading 3.88g/t, respectively.

About 5km north of Clarke is De Grey’s Blue Moon prospect where previous prospectors detected nuggets and more than 1,500 ounces of gold. Only 2.5km to Clarke’s east is the Gillies prospect where previous explorers identified soil values up to 1.8g/t gold. Also, limited rock chip sampling at Gillies returned gold values up to 8g/t.

Prior to the imminent wet season, De Grey plans to explore Gillies, Clarke, and the nearby Harmer and Langenbeck prospects. The wet season will be used to gather more historical exploration information on Clarke including geochemical, drilling and geophysical data.

Then, in the first three months of 2018, De Grey will begin detailed mapping and surface geochemistry at Clarke.

Meanwhile, a reverse circulation drilling program has been planned to start at Blue Moon in the next few weeks.

Mr Beckwith said De Grey expected to “discover and define new shallow gold resources” across its Pilbara tenements.

He added it was part of De Grey’s strategy to build a centralised mill and start gold production within the region in the “near-term”.

De Grey’s share price was up almost 9% in late afternoon trade, sitting at A$0.18 at the time of writing.