Pantoro discovers new ore zone at Scotia gold project
Latest drilling at Pantoro’s Scotia project returned wide gold mineralised zones up to 21m and narrower higher-grade zones up to 6.09g/t gold at the Green Lantern discovery.
Pantoro (ASX: PNR) says its Scotia mining centre south of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia has again been expanded with the discovery of a new zone of near surface gold mineralisation.
The zone is located at the Green Lantern prospect, south-east of the existing Scotia open pit and had not been previously drilled.
Substantial near surface mineralisation has been identified over a strike length of about 300m, with that mineralisation remaining open to the north and down dip.
Pantoro says the drilling results indicate that multiple surface lode structures are present at Green Lantern. These consist of a wide, lower grade mineralised lode and higher-grade zones typical of other ore bodies known within the mining centre.
Results are given separately for the wide and high grades zones at Green Lantern.
For the wide zones, these include 16m at 2.61 grams per tonne gold, 21m at 2.36g/t, 12m at 2.03g/t and 8m at 2.86g/t.
From the high-grade gold zones, assays include 3m at 6.09g/t, 2m at 4.51g/t, 4m at 4.05g/t and 4m at 3.41g/t.
Infill drilling also returns ‘excellent’ results
Pantoro also reported that infill and step out drilling at the existing Lady Eleanor mineral resource had returned “excellent” results.
These include 4.4m at 3.14g/t, 7m at 3.31g/t and 2m at 3.8g/t.
Managing director Paul Cmrlec said Pantoro continues to have great success with drilling at Scotia, with new discoveries first at Panda to the west, and now at Green Lantern to the east – both discoveries made within six months of work beginning on them.
“These areas have not been drilled previously and the results highlight the potential for increases to the mineral resource at Scotia which has not been effectively explored since the mid-1990s,” Mr Cmrlec added.
Several high-grade occurrences yet to be classified
Scotia was discovered in 1893 and was actively mined between 1987 and 1996, with reported production being 811,000t at 5.9g/t gold for 155,000oz.
The company says that Scotia has a number of mineral resource areas in proximity and includes several zones where high-grade mineral occurrences have not yet been classified.
The current mineral resource at Scotia is estimated at 2.43Mt at 5.3g/t gold for a contained 413,000oz.
Green Lantern lies 270m from the Scotia pit.
The Scotia mining centre is 25km south of the Norseman gold project in which Pantoro has a 50:50 joint venture with the unlisted Norseman Gold.
Norseman itself is 200km south of Kalgoorlie.
According to Pantoro, Norseman has historically produced more than 5.5Moz of gold since operations began in 1935 and is “is one of, if not the highest, grade fields within the Yilgarn Craton”.