Mining

Resolution Minerals identifies deep gold target at East Pogo

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By Robin Bromby - 
Resolution Minerals gold drilling ASX RML East Pogo 64North Alaska

Shallow RC drilling was completed at Resolution Minerals’ East Pogo target and uncovered gold pathfinder elements.

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The shallow drilling program is complete, gold at depth has been identified, and now Resolution Minerals (ASX: RML) is planning to follow up with deeper drilling to target the East Pogo prospect, part of its 64North flagship project in Alaska. 

East Pogo is located on the Pogo Trend, positioned between the 11 million ounce Pogo gold mine owned by Northern Star (ASX: NST) and the large Tibbs gold project being explored by Vancouver-based Tectonic Metals.

In its latest release, Resolution says one of the shallow reverse circulation holes intercepted gold pathfinder gold elements, indicating the potential for gold at depth with a 2km by 1.6km target zone identified.

Last month the company reported that it had uncovered seven quartz veins up to 4.6m-thick across five of the 12 holes in the now completed program. 

Strong geochemical signature indicating deeper gold

Resolution managing director Duncan Chessell said of the latest development that the “beauty” of the RC drilling program was the low cost of the 12 holes.

“While we did not receive near-surface gold results, the valuable data we collected now means we can focus our efforts to a deeper target zone,” he added. 

One hole encountered a strong geochemical signature of gold-bismuth-tungsten, increasing toward the base of that hole, indicating that drilling was likely getting close to a gold mineralised system.

“However, that hole had to be abandoned prior to reaching target depth due to ground conditions,” Mr Chessell said.

“For this reason, we are contemplating returning with a diamond core drilling rig to effectively test this target for potentially high-grade Pogo-style mineralisation.

Holes completed on time, on budget 

Historic drilling at the East Pogo prospect has returned intercepts including 0.5m at 24.3 grams per tonne gold and 0.1m at 35g/t gold.

Resolution’s recent drilling was shallow, using a low-cost RC rig as a first pass test of the targets to define deeper targets for follow-up.

The 12 reverse circulation holes at East Pogo, totalling 1,663m, were targeting mineralisation between 50m and 150m beneath the surface, with holes completed on time and on budget.

The 64North gold project is located in Alaska’s Tintina gold province. 

The belt, which was discovered by Russian explorers in 1848 (Alaska then being part of the Russian Empire and was sold to the US in 1867), extends in an arc from northern British Columbia, through the Yukon and across southwestern Alaska to the Pacific Ocean.

The arc spans approximately 2,000km and is about 200km wide.