E79 Gold Mines starts aircore drilling at Laverton South gold project
Previous owner St Barbara evaluated a number of targets across the Pinjin tenements.
E79 Gold Mines (ASX: E79) has started a major new phase of aircore drilling at its flagship Laverton South gold project in Western Australia.
The 20,000 metre program is designed to infill a 1.6 kilometre-long gold anomalism delineated by initial aircore drilling earlier this year at the project’s Target 3 prospect.
The anomalism remains open along strike.
Drilling is expected to provide detailed geological information ahead of deeper reverse circulation work planned before year end.
Multiple aircore programs are also planned at Lake Yindana to test greenstone targets and intrusions uncovered in recent gravity surveys.
Drilling of these targets will commence once heritage survey clearances have been received.
Key targets
Chief executive officer Ned Summerhayes said the E79 team was keen to continue testing key targets at Laverton South.
“Target 3 will be a priority for aircore follow-up to gain a better understanding of the controls on the mineralisation,” he said.
“We will test for southern extensions of the target and also test multiple greenfields targets at Lake Yindana, pending heritage survey clearances.”
E79 will also explore along strike to the south at structures which trend towards Kirgella’s Gift, located 4km to the southeast of Laverton South, where drilling by Renaissance Minerals in 2011 intersected thick, high-grade gold mineralisation.
Renaissance was bought out by Emerald Resources (ASX: EMR) in 2016.
No gold anomalism
E79 confirmed all assays from aircore drilling earlier this year had been returned, with results for 200 holes over 8,122m from greenfields Target 4 showing no significant gold anomalism.
Drilling tested the western and southern edges of a felsic intrusion into the greenstone, where historic soil samples had identified gold anomalism.
“While the results are disappointing to us, these targets represent only a small part of our tenement package and exploration will now focus on other targets within the project,” Mr Summerhayes said.
Laverton Tectonic Zone
The Laverton South project covers an area of 346 square kilometres over a southern portion of the Laverton Tectonic Zone (LTZ) within the major gold producing Archean Yilgarn Craton.
The LTZ is one of the world’s richest gold belts with more than 30 million ounces in historical production, ore reserves and mineral resources.
It hosts numerous producing mines including Granny Smith (3.7Moz), Sunrise Dam (10.3Moz) and Wallaby (11.8Moz).