Venus Metals reports more gold at Sandstone, new copper-gold drilling in WA
More gold has been intercepted at the Sandstone project by Venus Metals (ASX: VMC), with mineralisation remaining open at depth.
In a separate announcement this morning, the company also noted that drilling had begun at the Curara Well copper-gold joint venture in which it retains a 20% free carried interest after the farm-out to AIC Mines (ASX: A1M).
At Sandstone, the stage two drilling program was designed to test the extent of high-grade gold mineralisation previously hit at the Range View prospect, in which Venus has a 90% interest.
Results from this stage two drilling included hole 134 which returned 9m at 2.3 grams per tonne gold from 15m.
Another hole uncovered 6m at 2.06g/t gold from 20m down hole, including 1m at 6.14g/t gold.
A third assay reported 5m at 2.76g/t gold, including 1m at 6.23g/t gold.
Mineralisation remains open at depth
Venus says gold mineralisation remains open at depth and further reverse circulation drilling is planned to test both Range View’s extent as well as other targets along the Bellchambers-Range View gold trend.
Range View is 1.5km northeast and along strike from the company’s Bellchambers gold project.
Last September the Perth-based company increased by 29% the JORC-compliant indicated and inferred mineral resource estimate for Bellchambers to 536,000 tonnes grading 1.27g/t for 21,800 contained ounces.
Venus says analysis of the Range View results indicates a likely east-northeast plunge to high grade shoots, with high-grade mineralisation open down-plunge and to the northeast.
Copper-gold project close to large mines
Meanwhile, joint venture partner AIC Mines reported it had begun drilling at the Curara Well project 20km east of the DeGrussa copper gold mine owned by Sandfire Resources (ASX: SFR).
The drilling is intended to test a surface geochemical anomaly which, Venus says, displays “striking similarities” to the DeGrussa and Monty volcanogenic massive sulphide deposits (Monty also being owned by Sandfire).
The anomaly extends over a 400m strike length, with a width of 200m, and is set in a similar geological setting to Sandfire’s mines.
The anomaly, which has not previously been drill tested, will be the subject of 1,000m of reverse circulation drilling.
The region in which the project lies also hosts the historic Horseshoe Lights mine which produced 54,000t of copper and 300,000oz of gold, that ground now being explored by Horseshoe Mining (ASX: HOR).
The anomaly now about to be drilled by AIC is a coincident copper-molybdenum, gold, lead, zirconium and scandium occurrence.