Meteoric Resources reports high‐grade intercepts in southern extension at Palm Springs gold project
Meteoric Resources will now focus on Palm Springs and Juruena while retaining exposure to Rafaella’s portfolio as a substantial shareholder.
Perth-based Meteoric Resources (ASX: MEI) revealed a gold system along the southern extension of the Palm Springs project in Western Australia’s Kimberley region has grown substantially.
The mineralised zones have been confirmed along 700m of strike, with exploration potential open to the southwest.
Drilling of 26 holes at the Butchers Creek open pit for 2,278m diamond core and 5,042m of reverse circulation drilling showed the known historic gold mineralisation immediately below the pit extends for 350m to the southwest and remains open.
Headline assays of 69m at 4.4 grams per tonne gold and 55m at 3.2g/t gold are believed to be associated with multiple occurrences of visible gold grains up to a maximum of 3mm in diameter in narrow veins of quartz carbonate and chlorite up to 20mm thick.
Key highlights were 21m at 6.1g/t gold from 264m, including 2m at 47.8g/t from 270m; 34m at 2.5g/t from 170m, including 4m at 7.8g/t from 174m; and 12m at 2.5g/t from 180m.
The results are believed to provide confirmation that wide high-grade zones of consistent gold mineralisation extend southwest of the pit, with little internal dilution (unmineralised areas) inside these zones.
Assays from a further 12 drill holes – including newly-noted visible gold occurrences in the southern-most drill hole – remain to be reported, with further results expected by year end.
Improving results
Meteoric managing director Dr Andrew Tunks said results from Palm Springs keep improving as the company progresses its exploration.
“This second batch of assays are even more impressive than the first batch reported earlier this month and demonstrate the gold orebody continues strongly down-plunge to the southwest,” he said.
“As our understanding of the southern extension to gold mineralisation grows, so does our understanding of historic drilling under the pit [and] we believe we can now show consistently-mineralised gold zones which remain open at depth and along strike.”
New field season
Mr Tunks said the company had began preparations for the 2021 field season at Palm Springs on the back of a recent lithostructural interpretation of the area which confirmed the prospectivity of historical soil anomalies and generated numerous gold exploration targets across the 160 square kilometre tenement package.
Work will initially comprise a soil and rock chip sampling program with follow-up ground-based geophysical surveys to generate drill targets.
Programs of work across obvious gold targets identified by historical workings and previous exploration have already been approved.
Meteoric will also focus on rapidly advancing the Butchers Creek deposit towards production with immediate work comprising a resource estimate and a scoping study.
Assuming the study is positive, Mr Tunks said additional programs would be implemented to gain access to the open pit for dewatering and in-pit resource drilling, step-out and infill reverse circulation drilling, and preliminary metallurgical testwork to support a feasibility studies.