Diamond drilling at Marmota’s Aurora Tank returns up to 17g/t gold
Previous RC drilling at Marmota’s Aurora Tank gold project.
Assays from Marmota’s (ASX: MEU) maiden diamond drilling program at its 100%-owned Aurora Tank gold project in South Australia have returned up to 17 grams per tonne gold from near surface exploration.
A six-hole diamond drilling program was undertaken from surface to 50m depths at the Goshawk prospect. Better intersections included 5m grading 9g/t gold, with 1m interval containing 17g/t gold, and 2m grading 9g/t gold, with a 1m interval with 16.5g/t gold. A wider 9m intersection was also recorded with 2.4g/t gold.
Reverse circulation drilling started at the project in 2016 and continued through 2017. In September 2017, Aurora returned a 1m intersection with 101g/t gold, with other intersections at the project ranging from 9g/t gold to 93g/t gold.
Additionally, more than 117 intersections were returned with 1g/t gold or more. The company said it has identified 500m of strike and that mineralisation was consistently within 50m of surface.
Marmota claims these latest diamond drill core assays evidence the frequent high-grade intersections within the project and confirm the continuity of gold mineralisation which remains open.
The company is currently calculating a JORC-compliant resource and is carrying out geotechnical, petrological and metallurgical data on the drill cores, with initial metallurgical test work from the project recovering between 94% and 97% gold.
In late November last year, Marmota teamed up with WPG Resources (ASX: WPG) to look into collaborating on developing Aurora Tank, which lies about 50km from WPG’s Challenger gold mine and processing plant.
The companies are also investigating ways to process Aurora Tank ore at Challenger including a toll treatment option, or a joint venture or profit sharing arrangement.
However, at this stage, the agreement is non-binding.
After a short early morning run that saw Marmota’s share price rise almost 10% to hit A$0.023, it slipped to A$0.021, unchanged from yesterday’s trading close.