NickelX to drill Biranup gold project along strike of renowned Tropicana mine
Rock chip samples at NickelX’s Biranup project have returned up to 626g/t gold.
After reprocessing all available data, NickelX (ASX: NKL) has secured a contractor for a four-hole drilling program at its Biranup gold project in Western Australia’s Albany-Fraser Orogen, which is along strike of the Tropicana gold mine.
NickelX has contracted DDH1 Drilling to complete 1,000m of diamond drilling at the high-priority Black Dragon and Red Dragon targets within the project.
Drilling is scheduled to begin in the March quarter.
Previous exploration across the targets returned up to 626 grams per tonne gold in rock chip samples.
Meanwhile, limited aircore drilling unearthed 9m at 7.08g/t gold and 3.88g/t silver from surface, including 2m at 24.74g/t gold and 14.15g/t silver from 1m.
Commenting on the upcoming drilling program, NickelX managing director Matt Gauci said Black Dragon and Red Dragon represented “compelling” gold targets.
“NickelX has designed a targeted diamond drilling program primarily seeking to understand structural and textural information on the gold mineralisation such that we can plan future programs to explore what is a grossly underexplored target within the world class tier one Tropicana trend, located in the Albany-Fraser Orogen,” Mr Gauci explained.
Proximity to known gold deposits
Black Dragon and Red Dragon are about 30km northeast of AngloGold Ashanti’s (ASX: AGG) 10.3 million ounce Tropicana gold mine, which has an average grade of 1.7g/t.
NickelX noted Tropicana recently was valued at $3 billion.
As well as proximity to Tropicana, Biranup is about 35km from Carawine Resources’ (ASX: CWX) emerging Hercules high-grade gold discovery.
A 10km by 3km zone in the area hosts “significant” gold anomalism that NickelX says is spatially coincident with Black Dragon shear zone. Additionally, gravity data has defined a 250km structural feature that also passes through Tropicana.
Biranup covers 400 square kilometres in the northern end of the Albany-Fraser Orogen.
NickelX listed on the ASX in May this year after raising $7 million in its IPO.